


Learning to Live, Learning to Die

by galaxyghosts



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: AU, All-around spookiness, Angst, Body Horror, Danny and Phantom as separate entities, Gen, Mentions of Death, Mild Blood/Gore, Possession, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2020-05-30 17:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 26,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19407748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyghosts/pseuds/galaxyghosts
Summary: Ghosts aren't real. That, at least, is what Danny Fenton tries to tell himself. You'd think it'd be an easy belief to keep, but it gets harder to hold onto once you start seeing the dead wherever you go.





	1. New Beginnings and New Mistakes

_ April 17 _

_ It’s been two weeks. You’d think I’d have gotten over all this by now, but that would be a lot easier if it had actually ever gone away.  _

_ Mom and Dad say I’m fine. The doctor said I’m fine. I keep trying to tell myself I’m fine. Unfortunately for me, that doesn’t really change the fact that I’m not.  _

_ Something’s been happening to me. All I’m hoping is that I can figure out what it is before it eats me alive.  _

\---

There’s a lot you can pass off as normal. A trick of the light, the result of too little sleep, a hyperactive imagination, et cetera, et cetera. It’s not hard to make up some explanation that sounds plausible. There comes a point, however, when you cross the line between a healthy amount of skepticism and straight up denial of the terrible truths that are right in front of your face.

Danny Fenton was currently playing jump-rope with that line. 

Two weeks ago, if you’d asked him about whether or not ghosts existed, he’d tell you to not believe that bullshit. The ghostly voices his parents’ machines picked up were interference from radio, the cold spots were from air conditioning, the strange noises were from rats. Agreeing with the notion that ghosts might possibly exist meant agreeing to join the family business, and that was a career path Danny would rather become a ghost himself than pursue. He wanted to work for NASA, and he highly doubted that NASA would hire anyone who claimed to be able to speak to the dead. That wasn’t science, that was a scam his parents pulled for 20 bucks an hour per exorcism. 

As stubbornly as he stuck to this opinion, it was becoming harder and harder to maintain. 

Two weeks ago, something had happened to him. He still wasn’t sure what exactly that something was, but it had involved peer pressure, a few drops of blood, and a lot of stupid decisions. 

A joke. That was all it was supposed to have been, just a joke. 

“I’m standing in the middle of a summoning circle,” he’d declared with an ironic grin, gesturing at said summoning circle on the floor. “If only Dash could see me now, huh? He’d come up with all sorts of fun new things to write on my locker.” 

“Hey, be careful with that,” Sam had warned, but with little seriousness in her voice. She’d always believed in this sort of stuff, but in the sort of way that she could laugh at. “Don’t scuff it up. I want a good picture.” She’d quickly snapped it, Danny with arms raised dramatically in the centre of the candlelit circle. He should’ve moved after that, but it didn’t seem very important at the time. 

“So your parents really think this’ll work?” Tucker had asked, gesturing at the elaborate setup. “Summoning the dead, and all that? Why not just use a ouija board?”

“I’m guessing they just think this’ll be more theatrical. You know them, any opportunity to make this more cheesy than it already is and they’ll be there. Anyway, they’ve had it set up for ages now, so I’m guessing they haven’t found anyone yet who’ll actually pay to see it.” 

“Uh-huh. Okay, so walk me through this ritual. You do… what?”

“Lemme read the book again.” Danny turned the tome in his hands around a few times, then flicked through the gruesome details on each page. The silver book was easily as heavy as a brick, with the sort of damage to the pages throughout it that you’d expect from a museum’s prized artefact. His parents had found it in an antique shop for about twenty bucks. “Uh… It wants my blood, or something.”

“Your  _ blood?”  _

“Yeah. Something about the blood or... _"life force"_ of the living strengthening the dead. Gotta say, I admire the dedication of whoever’s  _ this  _ determined to open a portal to hell or whatever this is.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Sam laughed. “Give it your blood!”

“Yeah, like I’d- Ow.”

“Tell me you didn’t just get a papercut.”

“I got a papercut.” 

“Oh no, you gave them your blood! Watch out!”

Sam and Tucker were laughing, but Danny wasn’t. The two of them quickly stopped. 

“...Danny?”

Danny didn’t respond, because Danny wasn’t there.  Physically, there was still the same boy standing there, book in hand. There was just something about his expression that made his friends pause. It was somehow… vacant. Eyes wide. Non-responsive. 

After about two minutes of this sort of limbo, silence filled with his friends’ concerned questions, he’d fallen unconscious to the floor. 

It was a long and nerve wracking day after that. The doctors hadn’t been able to explain it, and had eventually written it off as being caused by lack of sleep.

_ I’m okay,  _ he had told himself, as he dodged his parents’ questions the entire way home from the hospital. 

_ I’m okay,  _ he told himself, as he stared into the dark of the basement from the top of those eternally-creaky stairs, then closed the door. 

_ I’m okay,  _ he told himself, as he climbed up to his room and flopped down onto his bed. 

He tried to tell himself the same two words again as he sat up to turn off the lights, but paused as he noticed something that shattered the illusion completely.

There was something in his room. 

The thing was unmistakably shaped like a person, but… wrong. It flickered in and out of existence like some sort of black flame, and what Danny could only assume were eyes were glowing like neon green lamps. Its fingers seemed too long, too sharp, a fact which Danny observed simultaneously to the equally as horrifying realization that it

was coming 

closer. 

“What the hell…?”

Danny scrambled off his bed, grabbing the nearest object that could conceivably be used as a weapon- in this case, a small lamp. 

“Stay back,” he called out, his shaking hands betraying the falseness of the confidence he forced into his voice. 

_ d a n n y _

Danny froze. 

The creature glided through the air as easily as skates on ice. Everything was screaming at him to run away, but despite the overwhelming feeling of  _ wrongness, _ he found himself motionless. Just like that, he was face to face with the thing, its clawed fingers lifting and drawing closer to his face. 

It. was. right. there. 

He winced and shut his eyes, expecting something awful, but nothing came. Just a strange cold feeling, like a cold draft from a nearby window. 

When he opened his eyes, it was gone.

That was two weeks ago. It should’ve been the last of it, but Danny had never been known for his good luck. The summoning circle was the spark that started the fire, and it was only a matter of time before everything went down in flames. 


	2. Distress Calls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two different cries for help.

_ i can’t _

_ remember _

_ i can’t _

_ … _

_ i used to be someone _

_ i just don’t know _

_ who that is anymore _

_ but  _

_ maybe  _

_ i’ve been given a second chance _

_ there’s light again  _

_ i can see _

_ and i know that he _

_ danny _

_ can see me too _

_ i just don’t think he wants to  _

_ \--- _

After that first time, Danny had tried to pretend like nothing had happened. He hadn’t seen anything, he’d insisted to himself over and over in the bathroom mirror. Maybe he’d fallen asleep without realizing it. Maybe the creature he’d seen had been nothing but some horrible night terror. Didn’t lots of people have night terrors like that? It would’ve made sense.

Would’ve.

If that had been the only time it happened.

In the two weeks since the Phantom, (as he had nicknamed it,) had first appeared in his room, it had made itself very clear that it wasn’t going away. He’d see it out of the corner of his eye as he made attempts to study for the classes he no longer cared about. He’d close his eyes when brushing his teeth, because he knew that otherwise he’d catch a glimpse of it in the mirror, right behind him. Every night, he’d wait until the last possible moment to turn off the light before retreating to the safety of underneath his bedsheets, because he didn’t want to wait and see what would be waiting there in the dark. 

It had taken him two weeks to tell anyone about all this, but he’d finally done it. He couldn’t handle going through this all alone. 

“I’m going insane.”

He sat on his bed with his head in his hands. Tucker sat on a nearby chair, looking around to see if he could spot the elusive spirit Danny had spent the last twenty minutes venting about. Sam was standing near the window, trying to summon to mind whatever ghost hunting knowledge she’d absorbed from Wikipedia and Danny’s parents over the years. 

“Why don’t you try talking to it?” Sam eventually suggested, as she lit a candle and started waving it around the room. The packaging said that it “soothed the spirit,” and although she doubted that meant soothing spirits as in calming  _ ghosts,  _ she figured it couldn’t hurt. 

“I’m not talking to it, because it isn’t _ real,”  _ Danny snapped. “I _refuse_ to believe my parents were right this whole time. Besides, no one else can see it! Not even my parents! I’m sure I’m just losing it.”

“I dunno, man,” Tucker said, his voice hesitant. “Like, usually I’d agree with you on this, but don’t you think it’s weird all this started happening right after you did a  _ ghost summoning ritual?  _ You should’ve seen yourself right before you passed out. It was like no one was home.” He shivered a little. “I’m serious, this is just like the start of any horror movie, and right now you’re acting like that one guy who’s in denial about the whole thing until he dies first. No offense, though.” 

Danny lowered his hands to glare at him. 

“Hey, I said no offense.” 

“Listen,” Sam cut in, setting the candle down on Danny’s desk, “Tucker’s right that you’re in denial, but you’re not gonna die. I just think you should try to see if it’s friendly. If not, well, it could be a chance to see if your parents’ exorcisms are actually real.” 

The lights flickered. Danny let out a frustrated groan.

“I am  _ not  _ bringing them into this. No way in hell. I’m dealing with whatever this is myself, and honestly, that probably just means getting more sleep. Because this isn’t real. It’s  _ not. _ ” 

Sam and Tucker gave each other concerned looks, but decided not to push it more. Not today, at least. 

“...If you say so.” 

Later that night after his friends had left, Danny had a shower. After leaving to put on some clean pajamas, he returned to brush his teeth, and raised a hand to wipe away the fog from the mirror. He froze, however, upon realizing that someone else had already done so. Not just randomly, but in a very specific pattern- No, not a pattern,  _ letters _ \- 

_ D A N N Y _

The toothbrush clattered to the floor. 

“Oh, fuck no.” Danny’s first move was to run, but the door was jammed shut. He shook the handle so hard it nearly broke, then pounded on the door, but quickly remembered that he was home alone. “Shit.  _ Shit.”  _

Someone was tapping on his shoulder. 

With all the bravery he could muster up, Danny called out, 

“Whoever, _ whatever _ you are,  _ what the hell do you want with me? _ ”

He didn’t expect a reply.

He got one.

The voice was chilly, hollow, like it wasn’t entirely  _ there  _ but he could hear it anyway. It was the same one he’d heard calling his name once before. 

_ i just want _

_ someone to hear me _

“...What?”

The lights flickered a few times, and the door opened. Shocked, Danny stood there for a few more moments, waiting to see if the voice would say anything else, but it didn’t. 

It stayed quiet for the rest of that night. 


	3. The Medium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life can be lost. It can also be taken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to add a few new content warnings to the tags because of this chapter, (specifically body horror and gore,) so buckle up.

_ April 24 _

_ I’m still thinking about what happened last week. The Phantom hasn’t tried to talk to me since then, but I know it’s still there. It’s just waiting.  _

_ I wish I knew what it wanted from me.  _

_ \--- _

Denial was still Danny’s word of the week, but he was starting to learn to cope with the situation, at least a little. There was still the shadow that lurked constantly outside his field of vision, but he could carry on with his day despite it. He could ignore it. Problem was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

The thing had  _ spoken _ to him. Not in the creepy, calling out his name like a demon in a horror movie sort of way that it had done initially, but in a way that sounded… sad. While he still was half-convinced that this was all some long, horrible fever dream, part of him wanted to know more. 

_ I just want someone to hear me. _

In a way, those words echoed some of Danny’s own feelings. This thing… It just didn’t want to be alone. 

...Or it was tricking him to try to get his guard down so it could kill him. Or he was just hallucinating. One of the three. 

Sooner or later, Danny would have to try speaking to it again. He just wasn’t sure what he’d say when he did. 

Today was a Monday. Monday was always bad, regardless of how possessed you were. At least the Phantom didn’t seem to like school much either, because it was notably absent throughout Danny’s morning classes. Then again, he was sleeping through half of them, so maybe he just hadn’t noticed. 

At last, the lunch bell rang. Sleepily, he made his way through the crowds of students, then through the swinging doors of the cafeteria…

...but as the doors swung closed behind him, he found himself alone. In fact, he wasn’t even in the cafeteria. As he looked around, wondering if he’d somehow taken a wrong turn, he realized he wasn’t even on the same floor anymore. He was in the basement, in the school’s storerooms. 

When he tried to turn back, he found that the door wasn’t there. 

_...Great. We're doing **this** today, huh? _

It was chilly in here. Danny hugged himself, wondering where the hell the exit had gone, but as he picked a direction and started to walk, his senses were suddenly assaulted with a horrible smell. 

Something was rotting. 

_ y o u  _

Danny froze. 

“...Phantom?”

But the voice wasn’t the Phantom’s. It had the same echoing, hollow, _ unreal  _ feeling to it, but it was deeper, and more feminine. This was something else. 

_ y o u a r e _

_ t h e m e d i u m _

There was the sound of something shambling from around the piles of boxes. The smell was getting worse. 

“...No. You know what, I'm _not_ dealing with this today.” 

He did the only thing he could: He ran. 

All around him, objects started lifting into the air, knives and forks of all different sizes. One whizzed by his cheek, drawing a small amount of blood, but he kept running. He had to get out of here.

Risking a look behind him, he finally saw what was following him, and resisted the urge to throw up. The thing, semi transparent and oozing, was awful. Where there should have been skin was rotting gore, and where there should have been eyes were glowing spheres of green light, not unlike the Phantom’s. It left a trail of blood behind it as it went, but if Danny hadn’t been so distracted, he would have noticed the trail disappear after the creature was far enough away, as if it had never been there in the first place. He wasn’t thinking about that right now, though. The stench was unbearable. 

It was coming closer. You’d think something that large would be slow, but it was gaining on him fast. He nearly ran straight into the door on the opposite side of the room, but when he pulled on the handles, he found it locked.

The air was getting colder. 

He pounded on the door with his fists and screamed. No one came. 

It was getting hard to breathe. 

He slammed his shoulder against the door, trying to break it open, but it didn’t budge. As the thing grew closer, he felt himself growing… weaker. 

_ s t o p  _

_ r u n n i n g.  _

Danny felt all the strength leave his legs, and he fell to the floor. It was like this thing was leaching the very life from him, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. All around him now was a sort of green glow, but all he could do was watch as it faded, and faded,

as  _ he _ faded, and faded,

There was a screeching noise. 

It was getting hard to see now, but Danny forced his eyes open just in time to see the Phantom appear. At first, he felt no relief, certain the thing had had some part in this. But the numbness turned to confusion as he watched the spirit let out a cry of what could have only been  _ rage,  _ and throw itself at the pile of gore that, strangely, had started to form into a more humanlike shape. 

Its humanlike shape didn’t last for long, though. As the two spirits collided, Phantom tearing at the thing with its claws and the other creature sending the tornado of sharp objects spinning faster and faster and faster, Danny slowly felt his life return to him. His aura seemed to be glowing brighter now, and even as it returned to its original invisible state, he knew somehow that it was still there, restored. 

Blood from the meat creature was spraying everywhere. After hitting the floor, it disappeared, but when it hit Danny’s clothes, for some reason, it stayed. The Phantom was relentless. 

It was protecting him, Danny realized suddenly. 

After what felt like ages, the gore spirit must have finally had enough. 

y o u c a n ‘ t p r o t e c t h i m f o r e v e r , it wheezed. 

Then it disappeared. 

Knives and forks began to clatter to the floor. The door behind Danny opened. The Phantom stared at him. 

Then it vanished as well. 

_ What just happened?  _

Sam was calling him. He stared at his phone, holding it in bloodstained, shaky fingers, then answered it. 

“Where are you? Tucker and I have been looking for you all lunch! Are you okay?” 

“...I’m downstairs,” he mumbled, still mostly in shock. 

“You’re in the basement? Why the hell are you in the basement?” 

“...Ghosts.” 

“What?”

Danny passed out. 

Apparently, Sam and Tucker had found him lying there covered in blood, but after dragging him to the nurse, it had been discovered that the blood wasn’t his. It wasn’t human, either. It seemed to be from an overturned box of assorted meats downstairs. Once Danny woke up, he found that Sam and Tucker had covered for him. Apparently, as far as the school administration were concerned, this had been the work of “bullies.” They’d apparently dumped a bunch of meat on him as a joke, accidentally knocked him out in the process, then fled. When they asked him to verify it, he didn’t deny it. It was better than the alternative, at least. 

“We figured that was more believable than… ghosts,” Tucker whispered to him, as the principal finished writing up an incident report. 

Danny was still too stunned by the whole thing to reply. As they waited, he found himself looking around for traces of his second shadow, but the spirit was nowhere to be found. It was then that he surprised himself with a strange new feeling: Concern. Not for himself, but for the Phantom. For the first time, for some reason, he wanted to see it again, if only to figure out  _ what the hell just happened _ . 

Eventually, after being checked for a concussion he didn’t have, he was let go from the nurse’s office. There was a light bit of lecturing for “trespassing,” (not too bad), a phone call home, (a lot worse), but fortunately no sort of serious consequence. Well, yet. He hadn’t gotten home yet, but he could cross that bridge when he got to it. 

“Okay, spill,” Sam finally said, once they were out of earshot of anyone else,  _ “Ghosts? _ ”

“It’s… It’s hard to explain. I still don’t know what even happened. There was this…  _ thing, _ and…” He shuddered. The image of it in his mind was still too fresh. “...Apparently the Phantom’s not the only one.” 

“What? You saw another?”

“Yeah, and it wanted me  _ dead. _ It’s… hard to describe. I just don’t want to talk about it.” 

“But-”

“Seriously, I just… I can’t. Just give me a little time to process.” 

There was a long pause. Sam opened her mouth to say something, but Tucker shot her a look. Danny had been looking pretty terrible since the incident, but right now, he looked  _ broken, _ like any sort of extra questioning would shatter him completely. 

Of course, they’d ask again eventually. You can’t find your friend passed out covered in blood in the school’s basement and decide to just forget about it. They’d just have to wait until after he’d had a little more time to cope with it. 

“Well…” Sam finally spoke up, “We’re here for you if you need us. What are you going to do now?”

“I think…” 

Danny closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed. 

“I think I need to talk to the Phantom.” 


	4. Peace Talks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny faces his fears.

_ i’m so afraid _

_ i’m. so afraid  _

_ i’m the only one who can fight them off  _

_ but what happens to us _

_ when i can’t anymore? _

_ \--- _

“I know you’re there.”

Danny stood in the middle of his room, gazing up at the ceiling. The time for denial was over. Denial wouldn’t save him if something like this happened again. Neither would acceptance, but at least he could try to be prepared. 

“You’re always there, so come on out. No games this time. Just talk to me.”

If only his past self could see him now. Past-Danny would probably think that Present-Danny had lost it. Hey, maybe he had, but sticking his head in the sand was going to hurt him more in the long run than talking to the ceiling. Maybe Future-Danny would thank him for this. 

“C’mon, Phantom.” 

...This would be more useful if the Phantom would actually show its face. 

Maybe it had been scared off. Maybe it didn’t want anything to do with him anymore, now that it knew he was some sort of target. Maybe Tucker’s story about getting concussed by a crate of meat was somehow actually true and it had knocked him back to reality. Probably not. 

No, enough with the denial. He had to face this, head on.

“...Look. I don’t know what you are, but I know that you saved me today, so I guess I owe you one. I promise I’m not going to tell my parents about you. Just… come out, okay? I just want to know what’s going on.”

He waited. 

There was a shadow out of the corner of his eye. When he turned, there it was: The Phantom, floating there in the corner. It was facing away from him, but it was there. 

_ i’m sorry _

“Uh… for what?”

The spirit turned slowly to face Danny, its green eyes narrowed. It said nothing else, but raised a hand, making a gesture that seemed to say  _ follow me.  _

Danny didn’t want to, but he couldn’t exactly say  _ no _ . 

Luckily enough, his parents were out shopping, and Jazz was doing one of her hundred extracurriculars, so the two walked through the house alone and unimpeded. Well, Danny walked, the Phantom moved like smoke being moved by wind. Eventually, they made it to the one place in the house Danny wanted to be least: The top of the basement stairs. He hadn’t been there since the incident. 

“You… You really want to go down there?”

The Phantom looked at him for a moment, then floated right through the solid wood of the door. 

“...Guess I don’t have a choice.”

Danny opened the door with a creak that made him wince. There were no lights on in the basement, giving off the appearance that the stairs led straight into an endless void. To Danny, that may as well have been reality. Going down there felt like a prison sentence.

He couldn’t see the Phantom anymore, but he could feel its presence, guiding him forward like an invisible tether. Taking a few deep breaths, he reached for the railing, then stepped downwards into the dark. 

After finally finding the light switch, he spotted the Phantom floating there, once again not facing him. The spirit’s gaze was fixed on a single point in the room: The summoning circle. It remained on the floor exactly where it had been before, minus the candles that used to surround it. His parents had tried to clean it up, but failed, finding the pattern had somehow been scorched into the floor like a brand. That hadn’t been comforting news for Danny to hear. Phantom remained where it was, staring. Then it looked at Danny. 

Rather than words, Danny found himself bombarded with a series of images and feelings, flashing like a slideshow with the speed set on maximum. 

He saw himself. The summoning circle, the candles, the blood. A tether. Phantom, trapped in an endless void then thrown suddenly into the world of the waking, confusion, relief, confusion, 

A beacon. He was a beacon. 

Thousands of unseen presences. Hunger. Life. The need to be solid, tangible,  _ real _ , 

He was a power source. He had, was, something they wanted, needed, 

The medium. The bridge between worlds. A way to return. To come back. To live. To exist. To be. To be. To be. It would come at a cost, a price they were prepared to pay, that meant nothing to them but  _ everything  _ to him, a cost he  _ could not afford, he couldn’t, he- _

He staggered back, gasping, his heart going a mile a minute. Phantom still stared at him, waited a moment for him to catch his breath, then spoke. 

_ we _

_ are bound together.  _

_ you gave me a second chance _

_ but _

_ you made yourself a target. _

_ i’m sorry  _

_ what happened today will happen again _

_ and i’m not sure  _

_ if i’ll always be able to stop it.  _

Danny stared.

What could he say that could possibly be a proper response to this? He hadn’t just summoned Phantom, he’d sent up a beacon signalling to every other spirit out there that he was someone who could be stolen from. They didn’t just want to scare him, or kill him, they wanted to take his very humanity for themselves, and Phantom was the only one who could stop them. He understood now, sort of: There was this plane of existence, and then there was the other one, and when he’d spilled that blood on this circle he’d placed one foot in either.

One foot in the grave.

It was almost funny. 

“So… every ghost wants to leach my life like a freaking  _ vampire, _ except for you.” 

Sometimes when someone is overwhelmed with so much information that they can barely cope with it, they pick one of the hundred questions going through their mind and latch onto it. Danny’s question now was this:

“...Why aren’t  _ you  _ trying to kill me?”

_ you’ve already traded part of yourself  _

_ just to get me here.  _

“...Okay.”

…

“I think I need to sit down.” 

Danny made his way shakily back to the stairs, then sat himself down on the bottom step, putting his head in his hands. He didn’t know how long he was sitting there for, but when he finally looked up, Phantom was gone. For a second, Danny considered calling out to it… him? again, but eventually settled on staying silent, standing up, and making the slow climb up those eternally-creaky stairs. He’d have to talk to him again soon, he knew that. For now, though, he needed a break from the supernatural. Just for a little bit. It was only a matter of time before he got dragged back into it all, anyway.

Just one break. 

It had been a long day. 


	5. Road Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A threat looms closer, a deadline nearer.

_ April 25 _

_ Phantom’s not out to get me. I know that now. Problem is, there are others who definitely  _ **_are_ ** _. It’s only a matter of time before more come, and I’m not sure they’ll go down as easily as the first one did. That means I need to make some kind of plan. _

_ Step 1: Figure out some way to help Phantom fight back. _

_ Step 2: Try to do that without parents catching on. _

_ Step 3: Don’t die? _

_ Easier said than done.  _

_ One way or another, I’m going to find some way to survive this. _

_ Mom and Dad’s college reunion is coming up in a week, though, so I guess I’ll have to survive that first.  _

_ \--- _

Some would say Vlad Masters lived the high life. He had everything, after all. All the money in the world, the biggest house with the nicest view, a business empire he could do whatever he wanted with.

The perfect life. 

But this life was not his own. 

He’d known for a while that he was dying. There’s only so much one soul can give, and the creature that had made its home in his head had no qualms over making his life hell. And yet, life continued on, because the same creature that was killing him wouldn’t let him die. It couldn’t, not while it still needed him. They were stuck like this, the two of them.

Always dying, never dead. 

Sometimes he missed the way it used to be. The three of them, inseparable. It wasn’t hard to banish these thoughts from his mind, though. The knife in his back still stung, and day after day after day all he wanted was to turn the blade back on the one who had put it there in the first place. These thoughts were harder to exorcise, especially when the demon brought them back to the front of his mind every time he made attempts to forget. Thoughts of vengeance, thoughts of death. The demon fed on it. It loved it. 

If he could turn back the clock, he would, but the time for hesitation was ending as he finished penning the handwritten invitations scattered across his desk. 

He couldn’t rewrite this story, but he could end it. It had been blood-soaked from the start. Why not finish it the same way? 

There was one invitation on the top once he swept the scattered envelopes into one neat pile. It read:  _ To my dear friend, Jack Fenton.  _

\---

Danny hated car rides. He’d always been claustrophobic, but a small space  _ plus  _ the forced interaction with the three people he wanted to talk to least was especially awful. Add in the fact that he was literally haunted, and you made one big horrible nightmare of an experience. 

“It’s been years since we’ve seen ol’ Vladdie,” Jack explained. “Ah, reliving the old times! This is gonna be great, eh hun?”

“I wonder what he’s been up to,” Maddie mused. “He never did call us after graduation.” 

“Oh well, we’ll ask him all about it when we get there. Now, who wants to listen to my ghost-hunting playlist? Fair warning, I’m going to sing along the entire time.”

Danny was currently wondering how much it would hurt to jump out of a moving car. Probably only slightly more than this.

Out of the corner of his eye, he vaguely registered Jazz staring at him with a furrowed brow. She’d clearly been concerned about him lately,  _ especially  _ since the incident in the school storerooms the week before. Their parents had let it go. She hadn’t. Either she was still concerned about the alleged bullies, or she knew that there was more to it than that. Hopefully the former. As Jack and Maddie started to sing to what was probably the most obscure playlist known to man, Jazz pulled out her phone and began to type. 

Danny’s phone buzzed. 

[ J ]: You alright?

[ D ]: peachy. doesn’t dad have the loveliest singing voice? 

[ J ]: You know that’s not what I’m asking about. I’ve been trying to ask if you’re okay all week, but you keep dodging the question. 

[ D ]: ah, so you decided to try again when i literally cannot escape the interaction. genius move. are you going to do this every car ride? 

[ J ]: I’m sorry. I’ve just been really worried. 

Danny was already typing another sarcastic reply when he glanced over and saw the look on his sister’s face. She seemed… genuinely upset. He looked down at the unsent message, looked back at Jazz, then sighed and deleted it. He retyped something nicer. 

[ D ]: don’t worry about it. it’s just school, okay? hey, maybe a weekend out of the city will help with all the stress. it’ll be okay, promise. 

Every word in that message was a lie, but Jazz expression softened. At least a little comforted, she nodded at him, then returned her phone to her pocket. 

Danny’s phone buzzed. 

A little confused, he opened the text. It wasn’t from Jazz. In fact, it wasn’t from anyone. His own text box was typing on its own. 

[]: danny

Danny stared, then noticed something out of the corner of his eye. In his reflection in the rearview mirror, there was something behind him. 

Phantom. 

[]: there’s something big 

He realized now that part of what he thought was his own restless anxiety was  _ Phantom’s _ . Maybe it was partially due to being stuck in a car with two ghost hunters, but judging by the message, there was clearly something else at play here. 

To make sure he didn’t accidentally send any of this to Jazz, he switched to a notepad app to type his reply. 

_ -what?  _

It was good that Phantom had chosen the phone to communicate with, Danny realized. He couldn’t say his reply out loud, not here. Besides, he probably wouldn’t have been able to hear Phantom’s voice right now, not with the racket in the front seat. He couldn’t hear himself think. 

Phantom’s reply was instant. 

_ -it’s getting closer _

_ -or we’re getting closer to it  _

_ -i’m afraid of what happens when we reach it  _

Danny didn’t know what to say. 

“Mom? Mom, can you turn off the- MOM.” 

“Yeah, honey?” 

“I, uh, feel carsick. Can we pull over?” 

“I’m sorry, Danny, it’s not safe to stop on the highway like this. But don’t worry! We’ll be at Vlad’s in no time. Do you want some water?” 

“Uh… I’m alright.” 

Jazz passed him a plastic bag. 

He couldn’t see Phantom in the mirror anymore, but he could feel how he felt, and he felt  _ awful.  _ As the car continued on, the spirit grew more and more agitated, and a cold chill began to settle in Danny’s chest. 

This reunion had been a source of dread for weeks, but for the normal reasons. He’d been afraid of small talk, boredom, embarrassment. As they pulled off the highway and onto the road leading to their destination, however, he began to realize that what was waiting for them there was going to be much, much worse. 


	6. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has something to hide.

_ how much longer _

_ do i have left…?  _

\---

How do you calm down a ghost?

More specifically, how do you calm down a ghost while your ghost-hunting family members are all standing a few feet away from you?

“Phantom,” Danny hissed under his breath, stumbling from the car as soon as it stopped, “I can’t breathe. Please get your shit together. Aren’t you supposed to be the scary one?”

He wasn’t exaggerating. The spirit’s fear was actually, literally suffocating him. It was as if the car had taken him to a far-up mountain range where the air was far too thin to breathe comfortably, and Dash was there, punching him in the gut repeatedly. Danny leaned on the car for support, trying and failing to look casual. He looked like a wreck.

Finally seeming to realize this, Phantom put a little distance between the two of them. The further they were, the less powerful the emotional effect was, and Phantom had been floating directly behind him for hours. At least now that the car had stopped he didn’t have to anymore, and once the two were separated a little, Danny could finally catch his breath. 

“Try to never do that again, please.” 

Jazz looked over at him. “Did you say something?”

“...Nope.” 

She raised an eyebrow, but let it go. 

They were here. The mansion looked like a literal castle, but Danny wasn’t feeling very kingly as they stepped up to the massive iron doors. 

He felt worse as the man himself stepped out from them. 

Vlad Masters. 

If the reunion had happened before Danny’s life started falling to pieces, maybe he wouldn’t have noticed anything, but the chill that assaulted him as soon as the door opened felt like being thrown into the Arctic Ocean. Phantom was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t know what, but there was  _ something  _ about this man that let Danny know that Phantom’s fears were warranted. Something was horribly, incredibly wrong. If he had a choice, he’d turn around and run.

But he didn’t have a choice. His family was already walking inside. 

Vlad’s smile was that of a snake’s. 

“Jack, Maddie! It has been far, far too long.”

\---

Harriet Chin hated college reunions. The bad food, the forced interactions. If she wanted to see any of these people again, they’d have kept in touch from the start, wouldn’t they? She might not have come tonight, if she hadn’t had a much more important reason than small talk. 

She was investigating a case. 

The victim had been Benjamin Price, a twenty-seven year old man from Wisconsin. He’d been found buried in the woods after someone’s dog, looking for a bone, had sniffed him out and dug him up. Bodies were found in the woods all the time, but there was something strange about this particular one. 

No one could figure out how he’d died. 

No bullet holes. No knife wounds. No poison in his system. No head trauma. No anything. Maybe it had been as simple as a heart attack, and maybe it could have been left at that, if not for the definitive signs of a struggle. Then there was the expression frozen on his face. It was horrible, and it was _ stuck _ . An endless, horrified scream. 

The man had no friends, no family, no connections whatsoever. No connections, that is, except for the company he worked at: Vladco. Technology and weapons manufacturing. It just so happened that this company was owned by Harriet’s own former classmate: Vlad Masters. 

This fact may not have been so important, if that had been the only murder.

Three different men. Three different years. All three of them found dead under the same mysterious circumstances in different parts of the same stretch of woods. All men with no friends, no family. Men who wouldn’t be missed. Most notably, all of them were men who worked for Vladco. 

It couldn’t be a coincidence that all three of them had no one who would care if their case was pursued or not. To find out  _ that _ about a person, you’d have to know them.

Or have access to their personal files.

It was so clear that there was a link here to be investigated. So why was no one investigating it?

Now, Harriet was no cop. She was a reporter. The only reason she knew about this case was because she’d happened to write stories on the first two.  _ Man found dead in Wisconsin woods.  _ She’d been thirty-five. _ Man found dead in Wisconsin woods… again.  _ She’d been thirty-eight. Now she was forty-one, and her interest in the case hadn’t waned. In fact, it had only grown stronger, because  _ no one. Was. Investigating it.  _ The cops  _ wouldn’t. _ She had contacts in the local police station, and they treated the case like the plague. No one would touch it. It was almost as if… they’d been told not to. 

So here she was. Driving on the highway on the way to the reunion, ready to get some answers. She’d known Vlad Masters, a little. They’d both written for the school newspaper. Now she supposed she’d have to get to know him again. One way or another, Masters had to know _ something.  _

She’d just have to find out what. 

\---

Danny’s night at the mansion had been plagued with nightmares. Death, pain, blood, pain. It had been a blur, and a horrible one at that. 

He’d woken up to Phantom floating right in front of him, staring. 

_ danny. _

Danny nearly fell out of bed. 

“JEEZ, I told you not to do that! You’re like a sleep paralysis demon, holy shit.”

_...i’m not a demon _

“...Right. Sorry. What is it?” 

_ i looked around last night _

_ masters _

_ he’s  _

“Rise and shine, Danny! Reunion’s today, and I don’t want anyone to miss a thing!” 

It was Jack. Phantom hissed a little, but as always, Danny was the only one who could hear him. 

“Alright, Dad. Just let me get dressed.” 

“Righty-o, see you downstairs!”

The door closed, and Danny sighed. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

_ just _

_ be careful _

_ stay out of masters’ way _

_ and whatever you do  _

_ don’t trust him. _

Phantom vanished.

“...Alright. Thanks for the existential dread.”

Danny got dressed. 

\---

Vlad was sitting in his office, door locked, head in his hands. He should be downstairs, at least playing the role of a good host. He knew that. He just… couldn’t. Not right now. 

The plan was falling into place. Everything was perfect. And yet… he wasn’t sure he wanted it to be. 

All those years. They’d been best friends, the three of them. What had gone wrong? 

**_You know exactly what happened, Vladimir. You know what he did to you. To us._ **

“Not right now,” Vlad mumbled, to himself but not quite. “Don’t do this right now. I need to think.”

**_Having doubts?_ **

_ “No.  _ I’m just… thinking.”

Any ghost hunter worth their salt would tell you to not mess with things you don’t understand. Don’t anger the dead. Don’t play with rituals without knowing what they’ll do to you. 

If only they’d been so wise. 

Maddie had been hesitant about the whole thing, interested as she was. She wasn’t scared, she’d just wanted to do more research before they made an attempt. To know exactly what they had gotten themselves into. Jack? He’d been so excited, he’d wanted to try right away. To speak with the dead.

To  _ speak.  _ Nothing more than that. 

How was Vlad supposed to know that Jack had drawn the symbols from the _ wrong book? _

“It really wants blood?” Vlad had asked, incredulous. “A bit macabre, isn’t it?” 

“I’ll do it if you’re scared, V-Man.” Jack had offered with a grin, clearly not taking this seriously. He never took anything seriously. 

Vlad looked at Maddie, then snatched the knife away from where Jack was already reaching for it. “No.”  _ I’m not letting you get all the glory.  _ “I don’t want you to get hurt.” 

“Are you sure about this?” Maddie asked, even as her eyes glittered with interest. She wasn’t happy about the whole  _ blood  _ thing either, but at least it didn’t have to be a  _ lot _ of blood. She had bandages on hand, anyway. It’d all be worth it in the end.

Wouldn’t it? 

“I’m sure,” Vlad replied, then stepped forward, raised the knife to his palm, and made the biggest mistake of his life. 

It was thoughts of that day that Vlad now found himself lost in. The past never left him. Always, always, it remained.

**_You can’t change the past,_** the demon purred, dragging its smoky claws along the desk to delight in the horrible sound it made. **_You can, however, make the ones responsible for it pay._**

“I know.”

**_So, what are you waiting for?_ **

Vlad took a minute to respond, his eyes drifting to the drawer underneath his desk. Slowly, he opened it, then opened the locked box within it, revealing an intricately carved knife. The same knife he’d used to curse himself twenty years before. Gingerly, he picked it up, remembering the feel of it as he’d slid it across his palm. He stared at it until his gaze was as sharp as the blade, then placed it within his suit pocket. It wasn’t required for what he was going to do today, but having it there felt somehow poetic. 

Then he stood up, and headed for the door. 

“Nothing,” he finally responded. “I’ve waited long enough.” 


	7. Hidden Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phantom tries to be brave.

_ May 2  _

_ I want to go home.  _

_ \--- _

Nothing Danny did could offset the constant, horrible, overwhelming feeling of dread that had haunted him since the car ride the day before. Whether it was Phantom’s fault or just his own anxiety, he had no idea- not that it made a difference at this point. Something was  _ wrong,  _ and he had no idea what. 

Phantom knew something, but he wouldn’t give any specific information. Perhaps he couldn’t find the words. Or maybe he was just too scared. One way or another, Danny had nothing to go off of but that one grim warning:  _ Whatever you do, don’t trust Masters.  _

What was he hiding?

It was on a search for the answer to that question that led him upstairs, even as the rest of the party’s guests were enjoying themselves downstairs. This was Vlad’s house, after all, there must be some answers to be found up here. 

Phantom’s anxiety was, once again, nearly overwhelming, but he allowed Danny to continue forward, probably because Vlad was downstairs. Anything to get away from him, even if it meant going up here. 

“Try to calm down, okay? I promise, first sign of anything freaky, and I’ll run downstairs. Don’t wo… Wait.”

Someone else was up here. 

It wasn’t Vlad. 

It was the woman in the mint green suit who Jack had introduced to Danny earlier: Harriet Chin. She didn’t seem to spot him, not yet, at least, so he hid around a corner, wondering what she was doing here. 

...Clearly not looking for a bathroom, he decided, as she produced a lockpick from her pocket. 

\---

Harriet wasn’t a criminal, but sometimes rules had to be broken to get some answers. It wasn’t like breaking and entering was her first choice, but Vlad’s answers to her questions had yielded so painfully little that she had to look deeper than what could be seen on the surface. 

“It’s a shame what happened to Benjamin Price,” she’d mentioned, as if it was casual conversation. “Scary, isn’t it? Happening so close to here?” 

Vlad’s stare had been ice, but the tone of his voice had the practiced calm of someone who was used to dodging questions. 

“Terrifying. I wouldn’t worry, though. The police around here are fine people, I’m sure they’ll catch the culprit in no time.” 

Every time she’d attempted to ask more after that, he’d avoided her. 

So here she was. 

She wasn’t naive enough to believe he’d just leave evidence lying out in the open, but maybe there was something. Just something small to let her know she was on the right track. Anything.

The door opened with a satisfying click, and she crept inside. 

“...Wow.”

Even without her suspicions of what the man had done, the office was creepy. There were large windows, but the cobwebs covering the thick curtains over top of them suggested that they hadn’t been opened in a long time. In the trash can were a few papers covered in feverish, scribbled notes, maybe torn out of a journal somehow, but crossed out with sharpie so she had no way of knowing what they may have said. There were a few broken pens in there, too. The walls were covered in paintings with eyes that seemed to follow you wherever you went, and then there was that boy in the doorway.

...A boy in the doorway.

Harriet spun around to face him, eyes wide and guilty. How had she not heard him coming? It was like he’d just  _ appeared. _ She recognized him, after a second- Danny Fenton, Jack and Maddie’s son. Oh, she was screwed. She was so screwed. 

“Oh, this isn’t the bathroom, silly me. I better… get going...” 

Danny raised an eyebrow. 

“Somehow I don’t think the bathroom would have needed a lockpick.” 

The two stared at each other. Harriet thought for certain that this was game over, that the kid would snitch, that she’d be thrown out and possibly fired, but to her surprise, the boy’s suspicious expression quickly turned into a conspiratorial grin. 

“...But I guess it’s an easy mistake to make. Hey, while the door’s open, no harm in looking, right?”

\---

So here Danny was, searching the office of a creepy old man alongside his parents’ old college acquaintance. It didn’t seem like there was much to be found, at least not without a thorough search, besides the fact that Vlad was a bit of a weirdo. He glanced at Harriet, wondering not for the first time what she was doing here. 

“So I know why  _ I’m _ searching through this creep’s stuff, but what about you?”

Harriet looked like she was choosing her words carefully. 

“I shouldn’t say too much, but I’m following a lead.” She still seemed a bit suspicious of him, despite her gratitude that he wasn’t going to rat her out. “What about you? Do you know something?”

Danny hesitated, because he didn’t know. Phantom had been frustratingly vague. 

“...I know that he’s a creep, also that he’s probably hitting on my mom, which is weird. Isn’t that enough reason to want to dig up some dirt?”

Harriet blinked. 

“...Guess so.” 

So the two searched on in silence. 

Phantom didn’t like anybody, but he wasn’t afraid of Harriet, which put Danny at ease. The ghost floated around for a bit, not being particularly helpful, until something seemed to catch his eye. In a blink, he was over by the bookshelf, then with a crash knocked a large book to the floor. The sound made both Danny and Harriet jump in surprise, but Phantom didn’t do anything else after that. The book lay open on the floor. 

Danny started to move over to it, but Harriet made it there first, grabbing it and flipping through the pages, her brow furrowing more and more each time.

“What the hell is _ this?  _ Possession, sacrifice, ghosts…” She glanced at the bookshelf. “...Come to think of it, a _ lot _ of his books are like that. Guess he has an interest in the occult?”

This meant nothing to her besides that the man had strange interests, but Danny’s eyes went wide. 

“Give it here,” he said, snatching it and flipping through them. The rituals here were like the ones in the book in Danny’s basement, some of them identical, but some of them  _ worse _ . It had details on the ritual he’d accidentally done to summon Phantom. There was something else in the book that caught his eye, though…  _ Banishment.  _

He stared at the word for a minute. Did that mean…

Then he felt a pang of anxiety that wasn’t his. Then a pang of guilt that was. 

It wouldn’t work, either way. The page in this book on the ritual he’d done made it very clear that it couldn’t be undone, not by banishment or exorcism or any other means, not without destroying himself in the process. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized that he didn’t  _ want _ to banish his second shadow, even ignoring the fact that it would probably kill him to try. It seemed insane to admit, but he’d gotten used to having Phantom around. For better or for worse, he wasn’t alone anymore, and it’d have to stay that way.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” he said quietly, “I wouldn’t.” 

The anxiety subsided.

“What?” That was Harriet.

“Uh, nothing.”

He looked back to the banishment page. It wouldn’t work on Phantom, but what about others? Would this have come in handy during the incident at school the week before? For now, he didn’t really understand what the page was asking of him, but he figured he’d want to read it later, or at least give it to Sam, who was better at deciphering this sort of ghostly stuff. 

There wasn’t a pocket big enough to fit a tome of this size, but he stepped out of the room and slid it behind a houseplant in the hallway for safekeeping. He’d come back to it and stick it in his luggage later. 

Harriet watched him do it, clearly still suspicious, but didn’t object to it. “I wonder why he’s so interested in this.” 

“Dunno. It was a hobby he and my parents shared in college.” 

Judging by the way Phantom acted around him, though, Danny worried it was a lot more than a hobby. 

Harriet shrugged and began attempting to pick the locks on the desk drawers. 

That was when Danny heard voices.

“Oh shit.” 

Harriet got the hint and went silent, while Danny pulled the door to be almost closed. Through the thin crack he’d left, he looked out, wondering who it could be.

It was Vlad.

And…

_ Dad? _

The two were walking side by side through the hallway, chatting about football or whatever idle chatter they could come up with. Jack was enthusiastic, while Vlad’s smile seemed plastered on, cold, fake. As obvious as that was, Jack didn’t seem to notice. 

“So, where are we going, V-Man?”

“Ah, just a surprise. It’s something I owe you after all these years.”

“Can’t wait!”

“Me too, Jack, me too.” 

Something was wrong. Danny felt it too, now- A presence, like a bucket of ice cold water being dumped over his head. Together, the two men entered a door at the end of the hallway. Vlad closed the door behind them, and they disappeared from sight. 

Harriet breathed a sigh of relief and returned to the lock she was picking, but Danny couldn’t relax. He felt so cold, and somehow he knew it wasn’t Phantom’s doing. 

“I-I’m gonna go,” he said shakily, and quietly left, Phantom following close behind. 

“Uh… alright.” 

Harriet stared at him suspiciously, no doubt wondering if he was planning to snitch after all, but he figured she could believe what she wanted. Whatever she was looking for, he hoped she found it, especially if Vlad really was some kind of criminal. For now, though, he couldn’t help her anymore. Not when everything was screaming at him that his Dad was in danger.

Taking the book with him, he made his way quickly to the door. Upon trying the door, however, he found it locked. 

Phantom stared. 

He didn’t want to go in there. The last thing he wanted to do was go in there. But Danny… Danny looked so helpless. Scared. Without Phantom’s help… Jack Fenton was going to die.

Scared as he was, he couldn’t let that happen. 

He drifted silently to the door, then placed one clawed finger to his shadowy face, where his mouth would be if it were visible. 

_ stay here _

“But-” 

_ please _

_ i promise i’ll save him _

_ just stay here  _

Then he flew through the door. 

He stuck to the shadows, staying out of sight. Vlad was standing there, facing Jack, who (for now) seemed unharmed. There was something else in the room. Phantom had felt its presence the other night, when he’d gone looking around, but he hadn’t gotten too close. Now, it was here. No doubt it felt his presence too. 

At least Vlad seemed unaware. 

“-There’s a debt to be repaid, Jack. I do hope you’ll forgive me when we see each other in hell.” 

“I’m still waiting for the funny part of this prank, Vladdie?” 

“None of this has ever been funny. Did you enjoy that drink I gave you, by the way? It should be kicking in by now.”

He didn’t get a response, because Jack fell to the floor. 

The thump was so loud that it could be heard outside the door, and Phantom felt Danny’s panic mirroring his own. Not much time left. 

“Alright, demon. Do your worst.” Vlad sighed, then went to look out the window, looking away from the very act he was helping to commit. He looked almost regretful. That was when it finally appeared: The presence. The ghost- No, Phantom was a ghost. This was a  _ demon _ . It coalesced from the shadows in the room, a grim smile on its shadowy features. Phantom knew what would happen next. As a soulbound ghost, neither he nor it were bound by the same rules that most ghosts had to follow. They had one foot in the living world much like mediums had one foot in the grave.

That meant there was nothing stopping the demon from stealing this man’s life. 

It was powerful. More powerful than Phantom. If he started this fight, he wasn’t sure he could end it.

But he couldn’t just stand by. 

_ g e t a w a y f r o m h i m.  _

Both Vlad and his demon spun around, Vlad with surprise, the demon with glee. 

**_I was wondering if you’d show your face._ **

“What is that? Another ghost?”

**_A pest. This won’t take long._ **


	8. Losing Battles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny isn't as powerless as he thought.

_ i don’t _

_ i don’t want to  _

_ i don’t want to die again _

\---

_ L… M… N… O… P. Price. _ The filing cabinet held information from all of Vlad’s employees. Records of paychecks, HR complaints, etc.  _ Price, where’s Price… Ah! _ Here it was. Finally, the folder Harriet had been looking for. For good measure, she’d grabbed the folders for the other victims as well.  _ Clay Morris, Tristan Elliot, Benjamin Price.  _ There had to be something in here. She was just about to look inside when the door swung open.

It was Danny.

“Jesus! Don’t scare me like that-”

Her annoyance fell away when she saw the look on his face.

Pure terror. 

“Are… Are you alright? What’s going on?”

“I need your lockpick. Now.” 

“What do you want with my  _ lockpick? _ ” 

“Please, just give it to me.” 

“I’m sorry kid, but-”

He grabbed it from where it was sitting on the desk, then ran. 

_ “Hey! _ Get back here with that!” 

Getting it back wouldn’t have been hard, that is, if he hadn’t slammed the door in her face. 

“I’m sorry!” His voice was muffled through the thick wooden door. “I’ll give it back later.”

She tried the door, but somehow, it had jammed. How the hell had it _ jammed? _

“Open the damn door!”

Danny was already gone. After trying the door for a while, she eventually sat back down with the files, sighing loudly. She’d get it open eventually, and she was going to strangle that kid when she did. For now, she guessed she may as well look inside the files, see if there was anything important. 

They were empty. 

She stared, barely able to believe what she was seeing. All that, and the files were  _ empty?  _ She felt like laughing. Or crying. Or both. This was… too much. She’d come all this way, picked two locks, might go to _ jail  _ just so she could try to find justice, find the truth, and instead she’d found nothing. 

...Wait.

Nothing. 

Wasn’t that strange?

There should’ve been  _ something.  _ Records of last paychecks? Copies of contracts? Anything? The man had  _ just died.  _ Maybe it would’ve made sense to empty the folders of the other victims, it had been years, after all, but why so speedy with this one? It was like Vlad was pretending the man had never existed. 

Now, why would he do this if there was nothing to hide? 

Maybe her suspicions hadn’t been so crazy after all. 

She placed the empty folders back in the filing cabinet, closed it, then stood up. There was still the matter of the door. That kid- something had been up with him, that was for sure. If she got out of here, maybe she’d be able to find out what. 

She took a deep breath, then lifted her leg and  _ kicked.  _

\---

Phantom was losing. 

He’d never lost a fight before, but that was because he’d only ever been in one. Then, he’d been acting on pure instinct, fuelled by terror, rage, and the need to protect the one who he relied on to stay here, to stay sane in this waking world he’d found himself in. His strength came from his bond with a human, not from any sort of experience.

Unfortunately for him, the demon he faced now had both. 

His claws were stained magenta, his opponent’s stained green, the floor stained both. Vlad watched from where he stood by the window, his expression icy. Something about the man made Phantom want to attack him too, but anytime he tried, the demon would be right there to block his path. All he could do was fight with everything he had, buying time until… buying time until _what?_ No one was coming to save him, after all. 

But Danny would never have forgiven him if he hadn’t at least tried. 

**_I expected you to be stronger,_ ** the demon hissed.  **_Not everyone gets the chance you’ve gotten. Are you telling me you’re wasting it?_ **

Phantom didn’t reply, just hissed back, slashing out recklessly at his foe. 

He couldn’t do this for much longer. 

You can’t kill a ghost, but you can make them wish you could. You can’t end their afterlife completely, but you can break them down, tear their spirit away until they’re nothing but a wisp of semi-consciousness floating through a sort of meaningless void that you can’t really call life. 

It’s different for a soulbound ghost. 

Sharing a life force with a human means that you need each other. You can’t have one without the other. It wouldn’t be long, Phantom realized with horror, before Danny started to feel the effects of the fight as well. 

_ mistakemistakemistakemistake _

He had to get out of here. 

Danny would never forgive him for failing to save his father, but there would be no one to forgive anyone if they were both destroyed. Phantom could’ve been reckless with his life force if he was doing this alone, but losing now meant taking Danny down with him. He couldn’t do that to him. He couldn’t. 

But when he tried to pull away, the demon grabbed his shadowy arm, keeping him right where he was. 

**_Going somewhere?_ **

_ letmegoletmegoletmego _

_ please _

_ don’t kill danny too  _

Vlad froze. 

“Did that thing just say  _ Danny?” _

**_Oh. Did I not mention it to you? I thought it was obvious since the moment they arrived._ **

**_That boy is a medium. This thing belongs to him._ **

“...Don’t destroy it then.”

**_And let it get away?_ **

“I didn’t say that. Just restrain it until we finish here.  _ Two _ bodies would be more trouble to take care of than it’s worth.” 

Phantom didn’t miss the tremor in the man’s voice. Was that really the only reason he was sparing him? If not… why would he lie? 

**_Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft. But fine, if you insist._ **

Phantom found himself frozen in place, shadows wrapped around him tight like ropes. All he could do was watch as the demon turned its attention to Jack, still drugged unconscious on the floor. 

Vlad moved from the window to stare down at Jack, his face a mask. 

“Goodbye, old friend.” 

Phantom let out a screech as Jack’s aura came into view, and watched helplessly as the demon began to siphon it away. Slowly, slowly, Jack Fenton was dying. 

The screech was so loud, so agonized, that no one noticed the door open. 

_ “Get. Away. From. My. Dad.”  _

“Wh-”

Vlad turned around just in time to see his own book, (large, heavy, and bound in leather,) be swung right at his face. With a crack that could only be the sound of a nose breaking, Vlad went flying, then collapsed to the ground unconscious. The demon screeched, clearly feeling the blow as well. Danny stood there, breathing heavily, then opened the book and turned to the demon. 

Now, a soulbound demon can’t be banished permanently. It can, however, be sent away, just for a little bit. 

As long as a price is paid. 

Vlad’s knife had gone skittering out from his pocket as he fell, and lay on the ground at Danny’s feet. Seizing the opportunity, Danny snatched it, and held it up. 

“Hey demon. Watch this.” 

With the book balanced open over his arm, he opened his hand, then brought the knife down across it, slashing a thin line of blood that quickly welled up and spilled over. He pointed at the demon with a bloody finger, then read:

_ “Relinquo.”  _

Not every story is true, not every instruction useful. If anyone else were to attempt this, no symbols, no candles, no holy water, it may not have worked the way they wanted it to, if at all. But Danny was a medium now, and to a medium, words had power. So did blood. That was why while the demon had been strong and fearless before, it now shrank away, shrieking with pain. Danny’s eyes glowed furiously, a glow that slowly surrounded him, swirling and pushing the demon away, away, away.

**_You can’t get rid of me for good,_ ** it hissed, even as it fled. **_I’ll be back._ **

Maybe it would be. For now, though, it disappeared, the only evidence that it was still around being a faint glow from Vlad’s closed eyelids as it returned to its host, then nothing. 

Danny stood there for a moment, guard raised, shoulders tense. For a few, terrifying moments he worried the demon might come back, but it didn’t. It remained in hiding, waiting. The fight was over.

He fell to his knees, and before he could muffle it, let out a small sob. 

“Dad, oh god, Dad… Please wake up. Please tell me you’re okay.” 

Jack didn’t wake up, the sleeping drug still running its course, but his breathing was steady. He was asleep for now, but he’d wake up. He’d wake up. 

Somewhere in Danny’s mind, a dam broke. That first sob was followed by another one, then another one. His Dad had almost  _ died _ . As much as Danny took him for granted sometimes, got annoyed by his ghostly antics or whatever else he did, he loved him. He was eccentric, but he was a good dad, and a loss like that would’ve destroyed Danny. It had been too close, way too close. 

What had happened to make Vlad hate him so much?

Phantom watched quietly from the corner for a moment, before floating out towards Danny and settling down beside him. His wounds were still there, green and glowing, but they were healing fast. He’d be okay in a bit. No doubt Danny felt the sting from them as well, but the panic kept him from noticing his own pain. He did, however, notice Phantom. 

“Oh jeez, you’re hurt…” 

_ i’m okay  _

“Are you sure? All those scratches…”

_ it’s okay _

_ see?  _

They were already starting to close up. Danny’s eyes widened for a moment, before he sighed with relief. 

“Thank god. I was so worried about you, doing this all by yourself… What  _ was _ that thing?” 

_ it was like me _

_ but worse  _

“So Vlad made the same sort of deal with it that I made with you?” 

Phantom nodded, then went silent for a moment. He stared at the floor where Jack and Vlad remained unconscious, then closed his eyes. 

_ i’m sorry  _

“What? What for?”

_ i failed  _

_ look what could have happened  _

_ if you weren’t here to stop it _

“...Hey. You still saved us. I wouldn’t have had time to pick that lock if you hadn’t been buying time, and then Dad would be… you know. Don’t sell yourself short.” 

He reached out a hand, hesitating a moment, then patted Phantom lightly on the shoulder. Phantom opened his eyes again, and stared at him with confusion. 

“C’mon. Let’s drag Dad out of here before that fruitloop over there wakes up and tries to stop us.”

After a long trek down the hallway, Jack ended up waking up, luckily _ before _ Danny attempted to pull him down the stairs. Turns out, he didn’t remember any of what had just happened. In Danny’s explanation, he left out the part with the ghosts, but kept in the part with the drugging. It felt important to know. 

“Oh, Vladdie, that prankster. I’m sure it’s just a joke that went too far.”

“I’m telling you, Dad, he was trying to kill you.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, son! We’re friends. He’d never do something like that.”

Danny couldn’t even argue further, because it was at that moment that Vlad walked up. Fortunately, the demon was nowhere to be seen, but the man wasn’t much better. His nose was a painful-looking shade of purple and the look in his eyes was unmistakably fury, but a grim smile was set into his face. 

“He’s right, Daniel. It was all just a prank. I do apologize for how things got out of hand back there, Jack.”

“No worries, V-Man. I’ll just be sure to have another prank cooked up soon to get you back!” 

Then he ran downstairs to find Maddie, presumably to ask her about prank ideas. 

Vlad was still there. 

“A word, Daniel?” 

“Get away from me.”

Danny tried to push him away, but Vlad grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. Jack was gone already, so there was no one left behind to help. 

“You’re not going to tell anyone else about this,” Vlad hissed, his voice low and dangerous. “You have a chance to go home now, forget all this ever happened. I’ll let you. But tell anyone, and by god, you’ll regret it. It’ll be my word against yours, Daniel, and I wonder, who will they believe?” 

He gave him a moment to let that sink in, then released him, turned, and walked away. Stunned, Danny stayed silent for a moment, but as Vlad walked towards his office door, he realized with a jolt that he’d forgotten something.

Harriet. 

Danny stepped forward, but Vlad was already opening the door. Any second now, he was sure he’d hear yells and threats and whatever else… but nothing came. The office was empty, and Vlad stepped inside without a second thought. She must have gotten away. 

He’d also gotten away with something else: The book. It stayed safe under his hoodie, behind his back, unnoticed by Vlad. One way or another, he was sure it would come in handy. 

“C’mon, man,” he said quietly, looking to Phantom as he made himself visible. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” 

\---

Harriet had forgotten the lockpick. 

It didn’t matter anymore. She could get another. There was something far more important she’d gained today, and that was the knowledge of whatever the hell had just happened. No one had noticed her peering around the edge of the doorway. Danny had been too preoccupied with knocking Vlad out with a book, Vlad had been too preoccupied with getting knocked out, and both of them had been too preoccupied with… glowing. 

She couldn’t explain what she had seen. 

A trick of the light? Her imagination? Maybe that would explain the glowing eyes, but it wouldn’t explain what the hell Danny was thinking, cutting his hand open and yelling at no one. If it had just been him, maybe she could dismiss it as one boy being deluded, but while hiding behind the door, she’d heard Vlad talking to… no one. To himself, or to someone- or some _ thing _ else? 

“Just lay low, and stop being so dramatic. It’s not like you’ve been exorcised. We’d be in far more trouble if you were.” 

In puzzling over this, Harriet’s mind drifted back to the book in Vlad’s office. Possessions, ghosts, demons… Was it possible that it wasn’t just fiction?

Maybe she hadn’t gained much evidence for the case of Benjamin Price. In trying, however, she’d stumbled onto something much bigger. Something much stranger. She couldn’t tell the newspaper about this, not yet. They’d only think she was crazy.

What she had to do now was continue on. Investigate more. Gather more evidence. 

The answers would reveal themselves soon enough. 


	9. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief moment of calm, a brief confrontation.

**_Don’t blame me for your own failures, Vladimir. It’s your own fault you left a book that dangerous just lying around._ **

“For the last time, I didn’t. It was supposed to be locked in my office. The boy must have broken in.” 

**_I admire his determination then, despite his many other flaws._ **

“His spirit must have convinced him to do it. Why else would he think of breaking and entering?” 

The demon only shrugged, and returned to his previous activity of shredding old papers. Vlad watched him do it for a moment, annoyed, before returning to his spot by the window and sighing. 

“He’s… so misguided. Using a ritual like that? With no idea of its potential repercussions? It’s reckless. If he’d picked the wrong page, who knows what he could have done to himself? Or to  _ me? _ ”

**_Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for him. I’m certainly not._ **

“I’m  _ not, _ ” Vlad snapped, putting his hand to his injured nose. “I just wonder what idiotic ideas Jack has been putting in his head. He’s so young, after all. What if all he needs is a teacher...?”

\---

Danny sat on his bed, staring up at the ceiling aimlessly. Scattered all over the bedsheets around him were papers covered in notes, instructions for assignments, and whatever else he needed to face the mountain of homework he’d been avoiding. 

_ Homework.  _ It felt ridiculous to be thinking about homework after everything that had just happened to him, but it wasn’t like he had much of a choice. His mark in science was hovering somewhere between a  _ definitely failing  _ and a  _ probably failing,  _ and he doubted his dreams of becoming an astronaut would hold up all that well with a big  _ F  _ on his report card. 

_ Better get going,  _ he thought bitterly.  _ This assignment isn’t gonna fail itself.  _

As soon as he picked up the pencil, however, his phone started to ring. The pencil was quickly abandoned in favor of snatching the phone up right away. Hopefully it was Sam or Tucker- He was dying to have a friend to talk to. 

It wasn’t.

“Hello, Daniel,” said the voice on the other end of the line. 

Danny’s hopeful expression quickly turned to a scowl. 

“...Vlad. How did you get this number?”

“Your father thinks I could be your emergency contact. Isn’t that funny?” 

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Not so hasty, Daniel,” the voice cut in before he could hit  _ end call. _ “You haven’t heard what I have to say.”

“Spit it out then.”

“Well, I just worry we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I wonder, why are we even fighting? We’re not so different, after all.”

Danny stared at the phone, hardly able to believe what he was hearing.

“...I seem to recall you trying to _ murder my dad. _ ”

“Bygones, bygones. Can’t we start fresh? After all, you’re new to this whole medium business. I’ve been doing it for twenty years. Don’t you think my expertise could be useful? I could teach you how better to cope with it. You could be my student.”

“You could fuck off.” 

“Language.” 

“No,  _ fuck off. _ I don’t know what you’re playing at, fruitloop, but I’m not gonna be your pseudo-son. You can stay there alone in your stupid castle, keep your demon powers and murder attempts to yourself, and never talk to me or my family again.”

“Fine, Daniel, I’ll leave you be. Just know that being a medium isn’t all fun and games. When are you going to realize that you can’t take on the entire other side by yourself?”

Danny hung up. 


	10. Night Terrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something's wrong at Casper High.

_May 10_

_There are more ghosts in this world than I realized._

_\---_

Jazz Fenton was worried. To be fair, she was always worried, but right now she was specifically worried about _Danny_. 

Her brother was many things, and talkative had never been one of them. It wasn’t unusual for a teenage boy to hate being around his family members. Still, recently, she’d noticed a change. The dark circles under his eyes had become more and more obvious. He’d shrink away from the dinner table and lock himself in his room for the rest of the night. He’d mutter under his breath to himself, then act as if he hadn’t said a word. 

Not to mention the fact that he’d been found unconscious _twice_ in the past couple of months. Was she really the only one still concerned about that?

Something was wrong. If her protective nature hadn’t let her know that, the fact that she _had eyes_ would have. _Everyone_ should’ve noticed.

And yet, no one did. 

Danny and Jazz had had more than a few fights over the years- (more like more than a dozen over the past _semester_ ,) but she still cared. She didn’t want to just sit there and watch her little brother slip away into… whatever it was that he was going through. She wanted to help. 

If only she knew how. 

\---

Casper High had a new guidance counselor. Everyone seemed to be aware of this fact, despite no one knowing where they’d heard that information in the first place. It seemed as obvious as the name of the principal or the science teacher.

The trouble came when someone actually wanted to _talk_ to that guidance counselor. That was when they’d come upon an empty room with the old counselor’s name printed on it. She’d died the year before, and hadn’t yet been replaced. 

Of course. It had been in the news. How could they have forgotten?

So the student would forget whatever it was they’d wanted to talk to the counselor about in the first place. They’d pause, then continue on through the hallway, left with nothing but the strange feeling that something was missing. That something had been lost. 

No one stopped to consider that something might have been stolen. 

\---

There was always a shadow out of the corner of Danny’s eye, but lately there’d been more than one. Since the first ghostly attack he’d experienced in the basement, Phantom had acted pretty effectively as ghost-repellent, but lately it seemed the local spirits were getting braver. He’d seen dozens of them lurking around corners or hiding in mirrors. He’d feel the occasional balled up paper or eraser thrown at his head and have no idea whether the bully responsible for it was from this world or the next. A couple of them had actually _attacked-_ wires had shot out from a school computer and nearly strangled him to death before he’d managed to unplug the possessed device, and his locker kept slamming closed on his hand. The hand in question was badly bruised by now, but at least Phantom seemed to have scared away the spirit responsible for it before it could be broken. 

It was safe to say his nerves were fraying. 

“I feel like I’m going insane,” he mumbled, not for the first time, although this time it was _to_ Phantom rather than _about_ him. They were wandering down the school’s hallway on an alleged bathroom break from study hall, and while not many people were around, it wouldn’t have mattered too much to him if more people were. He’d started caring less and less whether anyone saw him talking to his ghostly friend. After all, people had believed he was a freak for years anyway. 

_you’re not_

“Hopefully. I guess I’ll just have to get used to it, huh?” 

Phantom didn’t have a good response to that, so he stayed quiet. 

Danny’s eyes drifted to the wall, reading off the assorted posters on the walls and the names on the doors absentmindedly. A poster- _Gardening club, after school on Thursdays!_ A door- _Science Office._ A poster- _Spirit week assembly next Wednesday!_ A door- _Do you really think you still deserve a place in this world, Ghost Boy?_

Danny blinked. What was that last one?

_Penelope Spectra, Guidance Counselor._

He’d seen this room before. It had always said that, just that, nothing else. Was he seeing things? Shaking his head, he sighed, then continued on through the hallway. He should probably go to study hall. His heart hadn’t been in it before, but maybe it would be good to find something to focus on. 

\---

**_Time’s running out, Medium._ **

Danny’s eyes shot open. _Where am I?_ He couldn’t breathe. _Can’t breathe. Where am I?_ Darkness surrounded him like a heavy blanket that he couldn’t kick off, suffocating him and dragging him down. He clawed wildly at the void surrounding him, but rather than open air, his hands found soft soil. Enough digging and finally he managed to claw his way out, bursting out into open air with heaving, panicked breaths. _WHERE AM I?_

Shakily, he managed to pull himself forward and up out of the hole, freeing his legs and kicking off the dirt that still clung to them. The sky above was dark, and although the night sky was usually a comforting sight, tonight it was empty of the stars Danny loved so much. He let himself fall backwards onto the soft earth, willing himself to stop panicking. 

_I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay._

But he wasn’t okay. He still hadn’t solved the one pressing question that repeated itself over and over in his mind. _Where the hell am I?_

He sat up, and saw his own name. Blinking, he tried to figure out what he was seeing, but despite being right in front of him, he couldn’t seem to comprehend it. 

_Here lies Danny J. Fenton, 2004-2019._

_What?_

Another blink, and suddenly the gravestone was gone, suddenly _everything_ was gone, and he was falling, falling, upwards into the starless sky. The darkness was swallowing him up, his screams fading away and leaving him with only the knowledge that nobody could hear him, that nobody would _ever_ hear him-

_DANNY. WAKE UP._

\---

With a gasp, Danny sat up, instantly regretting it as his head collided with something hard. 

_“OW.”_ The word was yelped by two voices simultaneously as Tucker recoiled back, his hand clutched to his forehead, and Danny fell over again, doing the same. 

“What the hell-” That was Tucker. 

“Danny!” That was Sam. “You were passed out on the floor. _Again_. What happened?” 

Danny was still finding it hard to breathe. “I don’t- I don’t _know-_ ”

It felt as if he’d been thrown backwards into a freezing lake. All he could do was wrap his arms around himself like a shock blanket and shiver. He was so, so cold. It always felt a little like this whenever he had an encounter with a ghost, but never so badly, never like this. What had _happened?_

...And where was Phantom? 

Finally getting his bearings, he realized that the three of them were in a broom closet. His friends must have dragged him in here after finding him to prevent anyone else from noticing. Danny felt a pang of gratitude, but his lingering panic made that gratitude a little hard to acknowledge. 

“I’m… I’m sorry. I’m okay. I’m okay.” 

Tucker’s brow furrowed with concern. He’d been annoyed about the head bump, but seeing the state his friend was in made the fading pain in his forehead feel a lot less important. “You don’t _look_ okay.” 

“I’ll be _fine,_ ” Danny snapped, then immediately regretted his tone. “Sorry. I just… I have no idea what that was. It was like being stuck in a nightmare.”

Sam and Tucker gave each other a look. 

“What?”

“Well…” Sam looked at him, looking uneasy. “I know ghost stuff happens to you a lot, but for once, you’re not alone in this.” 

_“What?”_

“Yeah,” Tucker cut in. “The school nurse has no idea what to do. Probably twenty other people today have passed out as well, and woken up screaming because of something horrible. Whatever this is, it’s not just happening to you.” 

_not just us,_ mumbled the familiar voice in Danny’s head. 

He didn’t hesitate to answer. Sam and Tucker were used to this sort of thing by now. “Phantom? Did you see something like that too?” 

_i’ll tell you later,_ he said, then went silent. 

Danny frowned. “This is beyond weird. I mean, I know _I’m_ haunted, but everyone _else?_ I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.” 

“Well,” Sam started reluctantly, “Whatever this is, I doubt it’s over yet. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.” 

\---

Jazz didn’t mean to pry, but Danny’s door had been open, and the open book on his desk looked weird enough to warrant a closer look. It didn’t seem to have a title on the cover or the spine, only intricate runes, markings and drawings that seemed to mean something Jazz couldn’t understand. More importantly, the page it was opened to- _Banishment?_ \- seemed to be stained with several droplets of _blood._

_...That isn’t good._

This sort of thing wouldn’t be anything special in their parents’ room, but in Danny’s room? This was the last place she’d expect to find something like this. He _hated_ the idea of ghosts, didn’t he? What was he doing with something like this? 

There seemed to be notes scribbled in the margins of each page, but the handwriting didn’t look like Danny’s. Danny’s was a messy cursive, while this writing was a lot more elegant, except for the occasional feverish scrawl that looked far messier than either of the other writing styles. Jazz flipped through the pages, growing more confused each sentence she read. 

_‘A possibility?’_ was written neatly on a page that was labeled _Exorcisms._ **_‘KEEP DREAMING,’_ **was written directly under it. She wasn’t quite sure what that was supposed to mean. There was another page that seemed to be about binding spirits to objects. Several lines on the page were highlighted- whoever had owned this book before Danny clearly thought this was important. This particular page seemed vaguely familiar- Hadn’t her mom told her about something similar a while back? Maybe she should ask about it. It wasn’t like she believed in this sort of stuff, but there was clearly a mystery in these pages, and she couldn’t resist a good excuse to do extracurricular research. She pulled out her phone, snapped a quick picture of the highlighted page, then left the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this chapter! If you're interested in asking a question about the fic or seeing my occasional art for it, my art and writing blog can be found at https://ghostygoblinart.tumblr.com/ !


	11. Self Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forgotten, but not gone.

_i wasn’t always like this._

_i wonder_

_what was i like before?_

\---

A boy stood in front of a mirror, wondering why the reflection in front of him felt so alien. 

His hair was light, a blonde so pale that it looked white. He remembered being teased, a familiar, faceless figure commenting on how he must be going gray early. They’d laughed, and he’d laughed along. Who had that been, again? Their face was blurred in his mind, like a polaroid picture that hadn’t come out quite right. 

His eyes were green. They were striking, vivid, to the point where some said it made him look creepy. He couldn’t remember their faces, just the hollow feeling in his chest that the words had evoked. That wasn’t the only trait that people had found unsettling, but it was the one most easy to describe. 

He had a spattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. That was something about himself that he’d liked, he remembered. They reminded him of stars. He’d always liked the night sky. Something about it had always made him imagine a world where he could fly away from it all, find a home in the stars instead of on the ground with everyone else. 

Something was missing. 

He stared at the reflection for a long time, trying to place what about it looked so _wrong_ . It must be the right one, he figured. It was _there_ , wasn’t it? Reflections weren’t something you could swap around or change. The boy in the mirror was him. It must be. 

So why didn’t he recognize him?

Something was wrong. 

There was a mirror in the room. What else was there?

Anytime he tried to look away, he found himself looking back at the boy who could only be himself once again. Behind him. Beside him. Above. All around him, the same identical face that was his but wasn’t, that was so familiar yet unrecognizable at the same time. 

What was his name, again…?

_my name_

_is_

The thought snatched itself from his mind as the scene around him, the faces, the mirrors, all started to melt away. Something was casting a shadow, and that shadow was sweeping up all around him, obscuring his vision, his self, everything about him and his unrecognizable familiarity, all gone, gone, gone. He could hear someone calling out, screaming for help, and he realized with a jolt that the voice was _his_. 

Why was he screaming?

What had happened to him?

Why couldn’t he remember the face he’d seen in the mirror?

There was someone else there.

**_You’re both torn between worlds,_** someone new whispered in a voice that felt like a too-tight embrace. **_Don’t you know you don’t belong in either?_**

With a gasp- unusual for him since he didn’t need to breathe- Phantom’s eyes shot open. Already the memories of what had just happened were slipping away from him, even as he tried in vain to cling to them, to keep them from slipping through his shadowy fingers. He’d seen someone that could have only been him, but when he tried to reconjure the image of that face he'd seen in the mirror he found it wiped from his mind, like someone had gone through the pages of the story of his life and redacted everything with black sharpie. 

It was gone.

He felt the strange urge to cry. He’d lost something important, hadn’t he? But he wasn’t sure he _could_ cry anymore, and whatever it was he’d lost had been gone for a long time now. What was there left to mourn? 

_everything,_ he thought with a bitterness he hadn’t felt in a while. _everything._

_\---_

Danny stared. Phantom’s explanation had been disjointed, brief, and a little hard to follow, but he got the gist of it, and that was that _both of them_ had been affected by whatever had just happened. The confusing part was this: Phantom was a ghost. Why had he been hit with a hallucination that was affecting _humans?_

_ghosts don’t sleep,_ he explained, flying slowly around Danny’s room like agitated pacing. _ghosts don’t dream. it doesn’t make sense._

Sam and Tucker hadn’t come with. They’d wanted to, but Phantom didn’t seem to want to have a conversation this long with other people around, so Danny had promised to meet up with them later. It was just him, sitting on his bedroom’s desk chair, and Phantom, pacing around midair. 

_humans dream_

_i’m not human_

_so what_

_was_

_that?_

“Well…” Danny hesitated a moment. “Maybe it has something to do with me.” 

_you?_

“I mean, lately I’ve been feeling more… ghostly. Sam and Tucker have noticed it too. Apparently my eyes have made the occasional habit of randomly starting to _glow_. What if the same goes for you?”

Phantom tilted his head slightly, not understanding. 

“What if being stuck with me has made you, I don’t know… A little more human?” 

_more human_

“Yeah.”

Phantom didn’t quite know how to react. It made sense, but he couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around it. He’d called the pact a second chance, sure, but he didn’t really think that made him _human._ He was a spirit that was a little stronger, that could interact with the living world in a way that other ghosts couldn’t, but his humanity had always felt like a faraway, missing thing that he’d never get back. That was the truth, after all. Soulbindings made ghosts stronger, but it didn’t bring them back to life. 

But maybe… 

Maybe some of the missing pieces of himself wouldn’t be missing forever. 


	12. Mysteries Unsolved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz does some investigating.

_ May 11 _

_ Someone tell Jazz to stop going through my stuff. If you’re reading this, Jazz, STOP SNOOPING. _

_...I really hope she hasn’t read this.  _

\---

Jazz’s opinion of ghosts had always been that they were humanity’s fictional coping method for loss. No one wanted to believe that their loved ones were gone for good, so this was their idea of where those loved ones had ended up, however morbid that may be. Alternatively, ghosts could symbolize a societal fear of death, replacing an acknowledgement of that fear with a scary face to visualize in the darkness after you turn off the lights at night. Whichever psychological explanation for this belief applied to her parents, it wasn’t a belief Jazz shared. Unlike Danny’s angry rejection of their parents’ “bullshit,” (his words, not hers,) Jazz’s disbelief was purely logical. A psychological explanation made far more sense to her than any sort of truly paranormal claim. 

...And yet, here she was, researching her brother’s least favorite pseudoscience. 

It wasn’t like her opinions had changed. She just felt like it could be interesting to get into the mindset of whoever had scrawled those strange notes through Danny’s book, not to mention getting to the bottom of why Danny had that book in the first place. She’d asked her mom about the contents of that highlighted page, binding ghosts to objects, but she hadn’t gotten an answer. Well, she did get an answer, but it was long, rambly, and made absolutely no sense to someone who wasn’t familiar with ghosthunter terminology. In the end, Maddie had given her a ruby pendant to “protect her from evil spirits,” a sensor for detecting cold spots, and something called a “spirit box,” which was supposed to let her talk to ghosts. “But if you run into a demon,” Maddie had added very seriously, “Don’t talk to it. Just get out of there.” Then she’d left to make a house call to a couple that claimed their dead grandma was haunting their attic. 

So here Jazz was, sitting at the kitchen table with the sensor, the spirit box, and her laptop, reading articles on obscure ghosthunting websites. She was starting to feel a little silly, but she didn’t believe in giving up on things before she’d even started. 

_ I’ll just use this thing one time,  _ she decided,  _ Call it a learning experience, then cut it out.  _

The spirit box worked by sifting through radio channels at a rapid pace. Apparently, ghosts could talk to the living through manipulation of the static it produced. It was awfully loud, the flickering static already starting to give her a headache, but she figured she better leave it on for a few more minutes to see if anything happened. 

Nothing happened. 

All there was was a loud, annoying static. She stared at it, growing increasingly annoyed at the repetitive sound, and was about to turn it off when Danny walked in. 

The first thing she noticed was the cold spot sensor. There was a line over the screen indicating the consistent temperature. Well, it  _ was  _ consistent, but when Danny entered the room Jazz couldn’t help but notice the line dip sharply  _ down.  _

The second thing she noticed was his expression. It didn’t come as a surprise, though- He was clearly annoyed, and she didn’t blame him. The spirit box was making a racket. 

“Can you turn that thing off?” he asked, his tone implying that he’d already been covering his ears with a pillow for several minutes. “It’s really annoying.” 

_ so annoying,  _ came an echoing voice from the box.  _ turn it off.  _

Jazz’s eyes went wide. Did the box just…?

_ “Did you hear that?”  _

Danny hadn’t reacted to the box, but upon hearing Jazz’s reaction, his eyes went wide as well. The box had already gone back to static, but neither of them could deny what they’d both just heard. Danny had turned his head and was staring in shock at a point somewhere beside him, almost as if there was someone there staring back. It was such a direct stare that Jazz turned her head as well, expecting to see one of their parents, but no one was there. He was staring at nothing. 

“Danny,” Jazz asked gently, “Are you alright?”

Then the spirit box turned off. 

Jazz reached for it, wondering if she’d hit the off button by accident somehow. “Ack! Stupid thing!” 

Pressing the on and off button did nothing. It remained off, the noise gone. Jazz looked back up at Danny, hoping to talk about what had just happened, but he had already turned around.

“Danny-”

“It’s nothing, I- I just hate this stupid stuff,” he lied, unable to mask the confusion in his tone. “Put it away, will you?”

She didn’t get a chance to reply as he raced away from her up the stairs, but even after he slammed the door to his room, she could have sworn she heard his muffled voice talking to someone she couldn’t see. 

All this time, she’d assumed that Danny was having some sort of mental breakdown. She thought it must have been school stress catching up to him, or bullies, or his anxiety acting up again. She worried it might have been something even worse, especially with Danny’s recent tendency of passing out on floors. There were dozens of potential explanations she’d cycled through in trying to solve this mystery, but never had she paused to consider that the answer might be staring her right in the face. It was all around her, taking up her parents’ attention near-constantly and consuming her entire basement.  _ Ghosts _ . 

It was unbelievable. It was ridiculous. She felt like an idiot, sitting here at her kitchen table with a box that made noises and an overdramatic thermometer. 

And yet…

She stared down at the ruby pendant she’d been given, swallowed her pride, and put it on. If what she thought was happening now was really happening, her family would need all the protection it could get. 


	13. Reaching Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two opposite offers are denied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been a while! University's been keeping me busy, but I'm still here. I've missed this fic, so hopefully I'll be able to start updating it more often again. Hope you enjoy this chapter! (Danny won't.)

…

\---

**_When are you going to realize how worthless you are?_ **

Danny woke up, once again, with a gasp. Since whatever had happened at school earlier that week, nightmares had started to plague him each night. He’d had frequent nightmares already, but recently they’d started growing worse, more intense, more specific. Last night he’d been dying, but anyone he begged to call an ambulance, to help, anything, just turned away and ignored him. It wasn’t real, he knew that, but that didn’t fix the pit of dread that had opened up in his chest and remained there well after sunrise. 

As he reluctantly left his bed and started to get ready for school, the word _worthless_ continued to echo through his head. 

Lately, Phantom hadn’t been doing much better. As terrifying as it had been, he felt a sort of longing to see that strange vision again, to know something, anything, about who he used to be. He hadn’t gotten his wish, though. That overpowering malevolent presence he felt hadn’t left, (in fact, it had gotten stronger,) but it hadn’t given him another vision. When he closed his eyes, all he saw was static. 

Neither of them were okay. 

“I feel so… empty,” Danny muttered to Phantom as he stared at the breakfast he wasn’t going to eat. “All the time. I don’t know why.” 

Phantom made a small noise that was probably agreement, but didn’t say any more than that. 

“Danny?”

Danny looked up. Standing there were his parents, staring at him with looks of concern and hesitation. He knew those looks- They wanted to talk to him about something, and whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be a conversation he’d enjoy. 

“...Yeah?”

“We just wanted to talk to you about something,” said Maddie, tentatively. 

_Oh boy._

“Uh, what is it?” 

Jack cut in. “We’re offering to smash any ghost that’s bothering you, son.”

Phantom, who had been watching quietly from the corner, vanished. 

“Jack!” Maddie shot him a meaningful look, then turned back to Danny. “We were just… worried. After what happened on Monday, you can see why we’d be concerned, right?” 

“They said it was a gas leak,” Danny reminded them, fighting to keep his tone even. The explanation was bullshit, sure, but his parents didn’t need to know that. “They gave us the rest of the day off school while they investigated, remember? It wasn’t just me.” 

“That’s what they _said_ ,” Maddie countered, “But they also said that they couldn’t find any evidence of a leak besides the hallucinations. Don’t you think the true reason for it could be something a little more supernatural?” 

_Yes,_ Danny thought. “No,” he said. 

“I know you think this sort of stuff is silly,” Maddie said with a sigh, “But we take it seriously. If there’s any chance it could be some sort of ghost or demon that’s been bothering you lately, we can help you get rid of it. You don’t need to go through it alone.” 

“Don’t worry, son!” Jack grinned. “We can exorcise that ghost for you in a jiffy. It won’t hurt at all, either! Just five minutes, and that pesky ghost is gone forever.”

What should’ve been comforting words hit Danny like a strike to the face. He flinched back, leaving his untouched cereal on the table and picking up his backpack from the floor. 

“Don’t you dare,” he snapped. “No way in hell am I letting you anywhere near me with one of those creepy rituals of yours. I’m sorry, Mom and Dad, but no way.”

His parents looked like they’d been slapped. Danny couldn’t help but feel a little pang of guilt, but his fear for Phantom’s safety overwhelmed that tenfold. He’d never believed in his parents’ exorcisms, but he’d never believed in ghosts before meeting Phantom, either. There was too much at stake to risk finding out if it was real.

“Danny-”

“I’m going to school. Just… drop it. Please.” 

He was so grounded, but he’d rather be grounded than exorcised. Taking his backpack with him, he dashed out the door, and slammed it behind him. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered quietly as he ran, hoping that Phantom could hear. “I’m sorry.” 

\---

In the darkness of that abandoned office, something was taking shape. 

A girl was starting to hate her appearance. A boy’s fear of failing his classes were starting to overwhelm him. A certain medium was starting to wonder if when he’d set one foot in another world, he’d lost his place in both. 

Wonderful. 

\---

Jazz was as worried about Danny as ever, but she’d been forced to push her worries to the backseat for a little while as she helped with preparations for the Spirit Day assembly. It had been pushed back to tomorrow after… whatever it was that had happened on Monday, but it was going on nonetheless, and she needed to practice her speech. With everything that had happened lately, it felt like everyone was in dire need of some spirit. 

She had this period free, and she was spending it walking through the halls, quietly rehearsing. It helped a little to keep moving. 

“...And so, I hope you all can join me in putting the “I” back in spirit-” 

**_Jasmine._ **

Jazz froze. She’d nearly walked into the door of the guidance counselor’s office. Relieved that she’d escaped the embarrassment, she looked around to thank whoever had warned her, only to realize that the hallway was completely empty.

“...Huh.”

Maybe she should’ve shrugged it off and kept walking, but something strange in the back of her head made her pause. Guidance counselor, huh…? Seems like the sort of faculty member she’d know. Strangely enough- She couldn’t recall ever speaking to her. Maybe she should stop by to say hello. 

She opened the door, then glanced inside. The lights were off, but she swore she saw someone standing there, facing the window. Some sort of meditation, maybe?

“Um, hello! I’m Jazz Fenton, and I was wondering-”

**_I know._ **

The voice sounded female, unfamiliar, and… strangely disembodied. Like it was being broadcast straight into her head rather than coming from across the room. 

“...What?”

**_Come on in, will you?_ **

Jazz wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t sure what it was, but something about this whole situation seemed very _wrong_. She backed up slightly, forcing an apologetic smile onto her face.

“Actually, my spare’s about to end, I better head to my next class-” 

An invisible force pushed her forward, and the door slammed behind her. There was no curtain over the window, so the light should’ve been spilling in- but it wasn’t. Aside from the sky blue square of light on the opposite side of the room, partially obscured by the motionless figure, she found herself cloaked in impossible, absolute darkness. 

**_You’ve got a strong mind, Jasmine. You’re smart, observant, curious. Maybe too curious, but we all have our vices. I wonder if you’d be interested in an internship?_ **

Jazz couldn’t believe what she was hearing. What kind of job interview was this? An audition for the role of _murder victim?_ “Who _are_ you?” 

**_Penelope Spectra. I’ve been here a while, but I don’t blame you for not having heard of me. I love my job, sure, but I feel like it’d be easier with an assistant. Are you interested?_ **

“I’m sorry Miss, but _no way_ . Who do you think you are? Locking someone in a room and expecting them to want to work for you? I’d like to _leave-_ ” 

**_Shame. Here I was thinking you actually wanted to help your brother._ **

Jazz, who had been reaching for the doorknob, froze. 

“...What did you just say?”

**_He’s hurting, you know. Feels the world is up against him. I could help you help him, if you’d let me. Together we’d be able to help anybody we wanted to._ **

“I- I-”

**_Think about it._ **

The lights turned on, and suddenly Jazz was…

...In a janitor’s closet. 

“What the…” 

The door opened suddenly, and there was the janitor, looking confused. 

“Um…”

There was an awkward pause for a moment as the two stood there, staring at each other, Jazz clutching her ruby pendant and the janitor clutching his mop, until Jazz finally broke free from her shocked silence.

“Sorry! Sorry, I was just… I’ll get out of your way.” 

She ran past him, off towards… she wasn’t sure. Something. Someone. Her mind raced with the possibilities of what could have just happened, and it couldn’t seem to come to a conclusion. That wasn’t a dream. It couldn’t have been. First of all, she’d never fall asleep while rehearsing a speech, and second… It had been so _real._

There was only one person who might be able to give her some insight, she realized. Only one person who might be able to come up with any sort of explanation. 

Danny.

...After class. She’d find him _after_ class. AP history was next, and she wasn’t going to miss any notes. But after that, she’d finally ask him the question. 

_What do you know about_ **_ghosts?_ **

\---

“Dude, talk to me.” 

Danny was staring into the school washroom’s mirror. No one was in here, thank god, leaving only him and Phantom… presumably. The ghost hadn’t shown his face all day, not since that morning, and Danny was beginning to feel a little nervous. Maybe ditching class to try to talk to a ghost wasn’t his smartest move, but it wasn’t like he’d be able to focus on physics right now anyway. Besides, after class he’d have to go home, and at home were two parents who would gladly see his ghostly friend destroyed, no matter what he said to try to convince them otherwise. No, this conversation had to happen now.

“I know you’re scared, Phantom. It’s practically radiating off you. And yeah, me too. I’m pretty fucking freaked out.” 

_not helpful_

Danny sighed, half in frustration and half in relief.

“There he is.” 

_hi_

Phantom wasn’t visible in the room, but Danny could see him in the mirror’s reflection, sulking somewhere behind him. 

“Look… what I was gonna say is _yes, I’m scared,_ but I also know we don’t have to be. I’m not letting them hurt you.” 

_how do you know they won’t anyway_

“‘Cause I’ve been dealing with their bullshit all my life. I know how to avoid them if I need to. Just… you don’t have to hide from me, okay? I’m on your side.” 

Phantom didn’t say anything in response, but the anxiety in the room seemed to subside. 

Until it spiked again.

“Hey- what’s wrong? I swear, you’re safe-”

_it’s not them_

“What?”

_it’s-_

_get outside_

_GET OUTSIDE_

_GETOUTSIDEGETOUTSIDEGETOUTSIDEGETOUT-_

The lights went dark. 

  
_Everything_ went dark.


	14. Search and Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A whole LOT happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the story. I kept trying to find a place to end the chapter and start the next one. But no time seemed right. So I just kept writing. So what we're left with is a bIIIIG chapter- like entire rest of the Spectra arc big- and I hope you like it! Thank you to the commenters for helping me fight my writers block and keep going. This one's a doozy!
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter include body horror, eye horror, mild blood, and just general Spookiness. Enjoy!

_ May 14 _

_ … _

_ \--- _

Spirit Day was the last thing on Jazz’s mind today. Speech or no speech, something far more important had been occupying her thoughts.

Danny hadn’t come home last night. 

Neither had at least twenty other students. The current theory was some sort of party gone wrong- Why else would so many students go missing at the exact same time? Of course, parents were terrified, of course, police were looking into it, of course, the Fentons were already out searching for Danny themselves, but surely they’d all be home soon. Surely there was a reasonable explanation. 

Jazz didn’t buy it. 

There was  _ something  _ targeting students, and she wasn’t entirely convinced that it was human. She was going to school today, but it wasn’t to do her speech. It was to make a visit.

Whatever that “guidance counselor” was, Jazz was going to find out what she knew. 

She was just about to leave home when there was a knock on the door. Quickly, she rushed to open it, maybe it was-

“Danny?”

_ Oh. _

It was Sam and Tucker, looking just as worried as she felt. 

“Uh, hey, you two. You haven’t heard from Danny, have you?”

“We were just about to ask you the same thing,” Sam sighed. “He hasn’t been answering any texts.”

“We’ve looked everywhere,” Tucker added. “It’s like he just disappeared.”

The two exchanged a meaningful look. 

Jazz raised an eyebrow. “I’d been meaning to ask… Danny’s been acting pretty strange lately. You don’t happen to know anything about that, do you?”

“Uh… We…”

Sam clapped a hand over Tucker’s mouth. “We don’t know anything.” 

Jazz couldn’t help but notice Sam’s eyes drifting to the sign her parents had put beside the door, advertising their business.  _ Fenton & Fenton, Paranormal Consultants.  _

_...They definitely know something.  _

“You know, I’m not my parents. I might be able to actually help.”

“I don’t think sisterly advice is what Danny really needs right now,” Tucker said, pushing Sam’s hand away from his face. “But thanks anyway.” 

They turned and left, leaving Jazz standing dejectedly in the doorway. After a pause, she reached down and pulled her phone out of her pocket, then flipped through her pictures. She hadn’t taken any new ones since the one she took the other day. The picture of the page in that book. 

Maybe advice wasn’t what Danny needed, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t help. 

\---

Danny woke up. 

The first thing he noticed was pure  _ absence _ . Of light, of people, of anything. Even Phantom wasn’t there. While the spirit often disappeared during the day, Danny could always feel a connection to him, like a string tied between them. This was different. He was just… gone. Like he’d never been there in the first place. 

It felt like Danny was missing a piece of himself. 

The floor beneath him was tile, but beyond that, he couldn’t sense any detail about the room he was in. Surrounding him was nothing but complete, inky darkness, featureless as a starless sky. He could see nothing but black, feel nothing but tile, and he was utterly, completely alone.

...Until he saw the bodies. 

At first they were just shapes in the darkness, until he crept closer and realized he recognized them. Dash, Paulina, Kwan, Star, and several other students he’d seen around but didn’t know the names of. They lay there on the floor, completely and utterly motionless. 

“Hello…?”

Nothing. 

“Hey, wake up. We need to get out of here.”

No response. He lifted a shaking hand and reached hesitantly towards Kwan’s wrist, trying to check if he was… if they were…

**_What a worthless medium you are. The only one who can save them, and you never even tried._ **

Danny froze. The voice was familiar- There was no mistaking it. This was the voice he kept hearing in his nightmares. Every night, every night, every night. Maybe that should’ve comforted him a little, maybe it meant that this was just another nightmare, and he’d wake up back in bed, shaken but safe… but something about this felt different. More solid. More real. 

**_Oh, no. You’re not dreaming, Ghost Boy._ **

The bodies melted into the floor, and Danny jumped back, scrambling to his feet. He swung around, trying to locate the source of the voice, but he could see nothing. 

“Who  _ are  _ you?”

**_You could say I’m part of everybody._ **

“Tell me they’re alive. Tell me you didn’t kill them.”

**_Now what would I gain from telling you that?_ **

**_All I’ll tell you is that they weren’t strong enough. None of them were right for the job._ **

The voice went quiet after that, so Danny took off running into the darkness. He’d forgotten his pocket knife in his locker- what an  _ idiot _ \- and he wasn’t sure the words for banishment would work without Phantom here, anyway. He had to find him. He must be around here somewhere, right…?

There was somebody standing in the darkness in front of him. Danny slid to a stop. “Phantom?”

It wasn’t Phantom. It was… Sam?

It was Sam, but it wasn’t. It was Sam but empty, but  _ wrong,  _ Sam without the Sam-ness, a creature wearing Sam’s face. Her eyes were a glittering red, and they looked less like the eyes of a friend and more like the eyes of a predator. She was smiling. 

**_“No one understands you, not really.”_ ** She began to creep forward, and Danny took a step back.  **_“They think you’re losing it. Who knows, maybe you are…?”_ **

Before Danny could respond, the creature shifted, its face morphing from Sam’s to Tucker’s. His grin stretched wider.  **_“I think you know that, too. I think you know that there’s nowhere, nowhere you belong anymore. Nowhere at all for a creature like you.”_ ** He tilted his head.  **_“Not human, not ghost… not even a good medium. You don’t seem to be good for much of anything.”_ **

“Get away from me-”

**_“Do you want to know the honest truth? Even I don’t really need you. No- Your soul is already tied to somebody.”_ **

There he was, finally. Phantom. Danny felt the connection now, but it was weak, wavering. He could see him, but barely. The outline of his ghostly form, floating there in the darkness behind the creature that  _ was not Tucker _ like a half-deflated balloon, limp, lifeless. His green eyes staring out into nothing, unblinking. The creature let him run past it to get to him, but when he reached out to try to touch Phantom’s shoulder, to wake him up, to do anything- his hand went straight through him. It was like he wasn’t even there. 

The creature turned, head moving slightly before body, and there it was, right behind Danny once more. He turned to face it and raised his arms, standing in front of Phantom like a sort of human shield, as if that would do anything. The thing that was not Tucker’s smile was even wider, wider than it should be, wider than what was physically possible. And then it wasn’t not-Tucker anymore. For a moment, the thing didn’t seem to be anybody, just a shifting mass of features, unrecognizable aside from its glowing red eyes. 

**_“No, you’re of no use for a pact, not anymore. I only need you for one thing.”_ **

It shifted. It formed. 

It was Jazz. 

It smiled. 

**_“Bait.”_ **

\---

Jazz would never have believed you if you’d told her last week that she’d be abandoning her Spirit Day speech to break into the guidance counselor’s office, but here she was. She’d be lying if she said she felt no remorse over it-  _ She felt a whole lot of remorse over it, Mr. Lancer was going to be furious _ \- but her brother was far more important to her than some speech. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made. 

She was doing this. That, however, didn’t mean she had no doubts. 

The whole thing was insane. For all she knew, it was just her parents’ nuttiness rubbing off on her. Had she actually spoken to Spectra at all? Was any of this even real, or was she just abandoning an extracurricular commitment to walk into an empty office while Danny was off experiencing the aftermath of some wild party?

...No, Danny never went to parties, and she wasn’t imagining things. Maybe there was some sort of elaborate prank going on, but she believed in her own senses.  _ Something _ was going on, and she was going to find out what. 

Jazz took a deep breath, braced herself, then opened the door.

Nothing but inky blackness awaited her inside. Not the faint light from the window, not even light pouring inside from the hallway she stood. It was just  _ nothing,  _ as if someone had placed a vantablack curtain over the doorway. 

She stepped inside. 

“Spectra. I’m here to talk to you.” 

**_Finally._ **

The door shut behind her. 

\---

Danny couldn’t breathe. 

It was like a pair of cold, invisible hands had clamped themselves over his throat and refused to let go. The feeling had crept up on him slowly at first, but the harder he tried to wake Phantom, the longer he spent in whatever the hell this place was, the more he felt like his time was running out. He was on his knees now, and it felt like dying all over again, slowly, painfully. As horrible as it was, however, he wasn’t passing out. It was as if his consciousness was stubbornly hanging on… No, more like someone else was holding it there by force. He was trapped there, between life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness, ghost and human. Unable to move on. Unable to let go. If Hell existed, this was it. 

_ Let me go,  _ he thought, because he couldn’t speak. 

The creature didn’t even bother responding. It seemed its attention was focused elsewhere. 

Since Phantom had entered his life, Danny had always felt the eerie feeling of being followed. With that gone, he felt utterly, completely alone. 

Until he wasn’t.

Someone new had entered the void. Danny’s first assumption was that it must be another trick, but there was a sense of solidity in the figure growing closer that the creature lacked. This wasn’t a corpse, or a trick, or an illusion. This was real. 

This was Jazz. 

The control over him waned suddenly, long enough for him to gasp  _ “No,” _ before its hold multiplied tenfold, sending him doubling over in pain. 

She was getting closer, but then she wasn’t. Something about the space they were trapped in was shifting, changing. The world was starting to blur-

\---

Jazz was standing in an office. For a moment there the space had seemed infinite, and she could’ve sworn she’d seen the shapes of figures in the darkness- But then the lights turned on, and she was here. 

The room was far too small for the amount of time she’d spent walking in it. 

**_Welcome back,_ ** said the familiar voice. 

She could see where it was coming from, now. A redheaded woman was sitting facing away from her, on top of a desk. It was hard to describe, but something about the world seemed a little… grainy, like she was watching a home video from a 2004 camcorder. Maybe Jazz needed to get her eyes checked. 

**_Have you reconsidered my job offer?_ **

“Well, I had a few questions first,” Jazz replied, fighting to keep her voice steady. “What exactly would the job entail?”

**_Well..._ ** the woman paused a moment, seeming like she was choosing her words carefully. She still hadn’t turned around.  **_You’d help me, and all I really want to do is help the world._ **

**_I’m just missing the resources to do it._ **

She paused. Her head tilted slightly.

**_Have you ever wondered what someone’s thinking? Ever known that if you could just figure out what makes someone tick, what they’re hiding from you, you’d be able to help them out?_ **

Jazz couldn’t deny that she had. A certain brother of hers came to mind. 

**_You want to help him, don’t you?_ **

“...How do you know that?”

**_I know everything, Jasmine. I know everyone. If you’d give me a chance, I could give that knowledge to you._ **

Jazz had had enough. Gritting her teeth, she strode forward towards the desk. 

“If you knew everything, you’d know I go by Jazz.”

The woman hadn’t turned around. Jazz reached out. 

“You’d also know where Danny is.”

She grabbed her by the shoulder. 

“So where is he?” 

Penelope Spectra turned around to face her.

And it… was horrifying. 

There was something unfathomable about the face Jazz looked into now. Something indescribable. It was like it was every face and no face at all, shifting, glitching like a failed neural network’s approximation of what a human might look like, but not quite. And in between those shifting approximations, she could see flashes of something underneath. Something dead. Something with eyes that had rotted out long ago, flashes of rot and gore and decay, something that filled her with such visceral horror that she released her shoulder, staggering back before tripping over a chair that had not been there before and landing backwards onto the cold tiled ground. 

The thing tilted its head, and she heard an audible crack. It was every face and no face, nothing and everything, alive and so, so dead.

and it

was smiling at her. 

\---

There’s something eerie about standing in your school when nobody else is there. It’s such a familiar place, but it’s missing all the aspects of it that make it familiar, that make it safe. It’s like a hollowed out shell. 

This is where Danny stood now. 

He could breathe now, but he was certain he wasn’t safe. No, the entity wasn’t done with him, he was sure of that. It had only taken its focus away. Something about that was somehow worse. At least before he could see it, he could know where it was. Now, it was elsewhere in this vast mindscape, and it was focused on tormenting somebody else.

Jazz.

He needed to find her. He needed to find Phantom. He needed to find somebody, anybody, that could help them all out of here. 

Outside the windows, everything was void. 

_ you’ve gotta get outta here,  _ something whispered. 

Danny whipped around. The voice was like Phantom’s, but different- a different voice, with the same ethereal filter slapped over it. Standing there was a boy Danny hadn’t seen before. He was dressed in a bowtie and glasses, with neatly combed black hair. His eyes were…

...entirely missing. 

Somehow, Danny wasn’t surprised. 

The boy flickered like a film strip of an old video. One moment he was standing there, another he was floating, features obscured completely in shadows before he suddenly shifted back into his more humanlike self. In those brief shadowy moments, however, Danny couldn’t help but stare- just for a moment, he looked almost exactly like Phantom. He  _ wasn’t  _ Phantom- Phantom’s eyes glowed green and this spirit had no eyes at all, not to mention the fact that this boy was shorter and thinner than Phantom typically was, but they were clearly similar to one another. 

“You’re not human, are you…?”

_ you should know better than anybody that humans aren’t the only ones she can trap in here. _

Danny wasn’t sure how to proceed. Aside from Phantom, he hadn’t had a single positive interaction with a ghost before. For all he knew, the spirit was about to surge forward and attack him, to try to steal his life for himself. However, all the boy did was stand there. In his features, Danny couldn’t sense any malice. Only sadness, and surprisingly, a little bit of guilt. 

_ i’m sorry  _

“For what?”

_ i hurt you with the locker door the other day. i was just… angry… but i guess the real bully here was me. _

An apology? That was… new. 

“Uh… It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

There was a pause for a moment, before the spirit spoke up again. 

_ i know where he is.  _

“Who?”

_ the ghost you made your pact with. i know where she’s keeping him.  _

Now, trusting a ghost didn’t seem like a good idea. Maybe this was just another part of the entity’s trap. Maybe he’d just lead him towards some new, awful hallucination that he wouldn’t be able to escape from.

...On the other hand, she could probably do that anyway, no matter what he did. The only thing keeping him safe was the fact that she didn’t care what he was doing right now. Plus, it wasn’t like he had any other options. 

“Can you lead the way?” 

\---

A boy stood in a science lab, staring transfixed into the mirror above the sink. It felt like he hadn’t seen his face in a very, very long time. There was a scar above his eyebrow from that time he’d been shoved down the stairs by someone who didn’t like him for reasons he’d never really understood. At the time, he’d wanted to just forget it, but remembering it now felt like a lifeline connecting him to who he once was, and he was holding onto it desperately. Remembering it made him feel solid, made him feel  _ real _ . It wasn’t the face of the attacker he remembered, the cruel words, the awful smile- but his father’s concern when the doctor said he’d need stitches, the way he’d held him and tried not to cry, the way he’d apologized as if it had somehow been his fault, the way he’d taken him out for ice cream afterwards, trying to make it all better. It had. It had.

He remembered his father. 

_ He remembered his father.  _

Somehow he knew that the moment he looked away from the mirror, the memories would fade away just like the scar on his forehead would fade back into shadows. Somehow he knew this wasn’t real. But he held onto it regardless, desperately, desperately.

What had  _ happened  _ to him?

What had turned him to  _ this? _

He realized he was crying, but he couldn’t quite remember why. 

\---

“That’s… him?” 

Danny stood in the doorway to the science lab, the strange ghost standing beside him. There was a boy in the science lab, staring into the mirror, and Danny had no idea who he was.

Not until he shifted. 

He was solid, he was real, and then he wasn’t. For just a moment, he was the shadowy, ethereal form of the familiar ghost Danny had grown to care about so much. But the moment ended quickly, and then he was solid again, then he was a stranger again. 

“Phantom…?”

“No…”

“Phantom, it’s me. It’s Danny.”

“N- _ o, no-  _

His form was flickering more rapidly now. Danny could see him grip the sides of the mirror with shaking hands, as if he were holding on for dear life. As if turning around meant the end. 

_ don’t m- don’t-  _ Make me forget again-” 

_ i don’t _

want

_ to forget _

again.” 

Phantom was the last few flames of a bonfire struggling against the wind. He was the static on a TV that wouldn’t quite turn off. He was the film photo accidentally exposed to light too soon. He was desperate. He was fading.

And Danny had no idea what to do. 

“...Tell me what you remember,” he finally said, reaching a tentative hand out towards Phantom’s shoulder. “I’m here for you, okay?”

Phantom’s shoulders remained tense, but they slowly stopped shaking as Danny placed a hand there. He hesitated, slightly loosening his grip on the mirror’s sides. 

“My… My dad. I remember my dad.” 

Danny froze. He hadn’t considered that Phantom might have living relatives. This whole time…

“...What was his name?”

“I…”

He flickered. Just like that, he was ghostly again.

_ i don’t remember _

His form solidified a few times, but just as quickly lost its shape. He was more ghost than human now. More gone than here. 

_...this isn’t real _

_ is it?  _

He finally turned around. The human in him was gone completely now, and Danny had never even gotten to see his face. 

“...I’m sorry, man.” 

Phantom was silent for a long, agonizing moment, before he screwed up his glowing eyes and threw his semitransparent arms around Danny, hugging him tightly as his body shook with silent sobs. Danny’s emotions were tearing themselves in two, one part relief that Phantom was truly  _ back  _ and one part pure devastation as Phantom’s human memories had slipped away once again. Phantom’s emotions often affected his own, but that wouldn’t have mattered now. He didn’t need a psychic link to tell how much his friend was hurting. 

Hugging a ghost was a little like hugging a cloud, but they managed. 

It was a few moments before he realized the other ghost was still there. He was standing back in the hallway, his head turned to the side. Danny turned back around, giving an awkward but appreciative smile. Phantom hissed a little as he noticed the second presence, but relaxed a little as he realized Danny wasn’t afraid. 

“Thanks for all the help, uh… What should I call you?” 

There was a pause. 

_...it’s sidney, _ the ghost replied after some amount of thought,  _ but don’t thank me just yet.  _

“What?”

_ she’s coming.  _

\---

_ Screw this. _

Jazz had broken into a run. Danny was clearly not in here, and whatever the hell that  _ was  _ that she had been speaking to clearly had no plans to reveal where he was. There was absolutely nothing left for her in that room but nightmare fuel and the possibility of being murdered in some gruesome and supernatural way. 

_ Screw this screw this screw this.  _

To clarify: She was not giving up. She was not being cowardly. She was being practical. You ask someone several times where your brother is, they reveal to you that they’re some sort of nightmarish corpse demon and are probably seconds away from stealing your soul,  _ you run _ .

She hadn’t made it far down the hallway before the door she’d slammed behind her flew suddenly off its hinges. An amalgamation of  _ nothing  _ and  _ everything  _ began to pour from the room, limbs reaching forward and snapping off into tree branches, eyes of every possible color blinking and whirling wildly, shadows from which a figure reaching, stretching, would briefly appear before collapsing back down into the nothingness again. Teeth flashed from mouths in places mouths should not be, every single one of them smiling. 

**_YOU’RE NOT GETTING AWAY THIS TIME._ **

The voice echoed out in every possible pitch, simultaneous whispering, mumbling, shouting, weeping, screaming. 

“Come on come on come on-”

Jazz fumbled with her phone as she ran, unlocking it with shaky hands and hurriedly swiping to her photo gallery. She’d had her doubts about this whole “ghosts are real,” thing, but every single one of them had evaporated by now. Whatever was going on, there was no explanation for it aside from the impossible. 

Finally, she found it: the picture she’d taken of that page in Danny’s book. It had seemed fake at the time, sure, but at times like these, anything was possible. She’d read it a few times already, but she went over it once more to see if there was anything she could use. She needed an object to bind the ghost- a pendant would do- the words to finish the ritual- she knew those- and…

...The blood of a medium.

She didn’t have that.

Nor was she sure she’d be prepared to use it, even if by some circumstance she’d been able to get her hands on it… whatever a medium was. No, it seemed like all she had in her arsenal now was the time she’d spent jogging.

The entity was catching up. 

Jazz ran. 

\---

In the hallway not far away, the spirit known as Sidney stuck out his semicorporeal fist. 

_ take it. _

“What?”

Danny looked down, and in Sidney’s now-open hand was a slightly bloodstained pocket knife.  _ Danny’s  _ pocket knife. 

“Where’d you get it?”

_ we’ve been sharing a locker for a while. i thought i needed it. i took it. i’m sorry. _

Phantom hissed a little. Danny hesitated, then carefully took it. He’d be mad, but… he’d given it back, hadn’t he? And with good timing, too.

“...It’s okay. You taking it might’ve just saved all our asses.” 

There was a hint of a smile on Sidney’s eyeless face, a face that seemed to be fading now. The moment the pocket knife left his hands, his form seemed to destabilize a little. Slowly but surely, shadows started to overtake his features. However, he didn’t seem concerned- Like he’d expected this to happen. Like this is what he was used to. He looked a lot more like Phantom now. 

_ now  _

_ will you make sure that bully  _

_ can’t hurt anybody anymore?  _

Danny tightened his grip on the pocket knife, then nodded. 

“I promise.” 

Sidney nodded back at him, then-

Then he was gone. 

Danny stared into the empty hallway for a moment, then sighed and looked back at Phantom, who hadn’t left his side. 

“What do you say, buddy? Ready to hunt down a demon?”

_ i don’t think  _

_ we have a choice _

Footsteps were echoing from around the corner. 

\---

_ Run.  _

_ \--- _

**_STOP RUNNING._ **

\---

“Is that-”    
  


The footsteps got closer and closer and closer, until finally, turning the corner was-

“Jazz!”

“Danny!”

Jazz’s face lit up with relief, but she didn’t stop. She ran right for him, then grabbed his hand, dragging him along as she kept going down the hallway. 

“We have to go  _ fast- _ ”

“Wait, why?”

“That.” 

Something slammed into a set of lockers behind them. Then another. Until it finally turned the corner, gaining on them. Danny didn’t even know how he’d describe it. He just turned back around, gripping Jazz’s hand as he matched her pace. 

“Right. Yeah. Run. Gotcha.” 

Sure, he’d planned to hunt the demon, but now that it was hunting  _ him  _ his plans vanished. He wasn’t good under pressure, and this was  _ a hell of a lot of pressure _ . Besides, in the moments it’d take to do any sort of medium ritual, the thing would catch up to them for sure. Plus, would it even work at all? 

_ what other option  _

_ do we have?  _

Phantom was flying alongside them, but Danny could feel his hesitation. 

“Dude, you see that thing! You know more than any of us how powerful she is.” 

Jazz gave Danny a look. “Who are you talking to?” 

Phantom ignored her. 

_ i know _

_ i’m scared  _

_ but i’m tired of _

_ letting her _

_ control me.  _

Danny sighed. He was right. Besides… This wasn’t  _ really  _ Casper High. They couldn’t just walk out the door- they needed to bring this whole place down if they wanted to escape. 

“Jazz. Do you trust me?” 

“I-”

“Because I have a sort-of plan. That’s a demon, and the only way to bring her down is by using  _ me. _ ”

Danny expected a look of disbelief, but Jazz surprised him as a look of understanding dawned across her face instead. 

“...A medium.”

“...How did you know?” 

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading.” 

There were a set of doors splitting the hallway ahead. The three of them zipped through and slammed them behind them, doing their best to hold the doors closed as the demon loomed closer. As he leaned all his weight against the door, Danny pulled out his pocket knife. 

Jazz looked alarmed. “Wait-”

He sliced his hand open. 

“God, Danny, did you have to cut your entire hand? You’re gonna slice a tendon.” 

Danny rolled his eyes. “Too late now.” 

The demon was getting closer. Phantom was freaking out, zipping around as if he wasn’t sure whether to place himself in front of Danny or hide behind him. Sure, he knew they needed to do this, but he wasn’t happy about it. 

There was an open classroom door right next to where they were standing. Danny waved Jazz over. “Get in there, okay? I’m the only one who can do this. You don’t have to get hurt.”

“But-”

“Shit! Sorry about this-” 

Danny shoved her inside and closed the door just as the demon burst through from the other side of the hallway. Danny held his ground, raising his bloodied hand to the air. 

“Okay, I’ve- I’ve done this before. I can do it again.” 

The demon froze. 

Phantom stayed right beside him. A supernatural light began to surround the two. Danny closed his eyes, then opened them. They were glowing a brilliant green. 

From nowhere, wind picked up. 

Danny knew the words. 

_ “Relinquo.”  _

This was where the demon would shrink away, screeching, as she was banished away into nothing. This was where they’d be free. This was where everything would be okay. 

Except it wasn’t. 

The demon was making a sound, but it wasn’t a shriek of pain. 

_ It was laughter.  _

**_YOU REALLY THINK THAT WILL WORK HERE? YOU’RE MORE OF AN I D I O T THAN I THOUGHT._ **

**_THAT WORKS IN YOUR PLANE OF EXISTENCE._ **

**_THIS IS M I N E._ **

A hand shot out, then another, then another, all reaching forth and wrapping themselves around Danny’s neck, arm, arm, neck, neck, neck, slamming him against the wall of lockers nearby and sending the bloodied knife skidding across the floor. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t understand. He thought it’d work- If this didn’t work, what would?

**_YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A PEST, MEDIUM. YOU’RE NOT N E E D E D._ **

Its grip tightened. Danny’s blood was dripping to the ground. Phantom was screaming. He could see him slashing at her, at the arms that were holding Danny against the wall, but anything he slashed away grew back in seconds. He was panicking even more than Danny, and he was weakening, too. The glow hadn’t left, but it was different now. It wasn’t power growing. It was power, life,  _ leaving.  _ The demon was stealing all of it. 

**_now go somewhere you’ll finally belong._ **

Danny was dying. Phantom had fallen to the ground. The world was going dark, he couldn’t breathe, he-

“HEY!” 

The demon froze, and turned its many heads around. Danny wheezed. 

“N-No-” 

There was Jazz. She’d left the classroom and was standing tall behind the demon. Her fist was in the air, and she was holding something, but Danny couldn’t tell what it was. In her other hand was Danny’s bloody pocket knife. 

_ “Get your hands off my brother.” _

Now Danny could see what was held tight in her raised fist. It was shining.

The ruby pendant. 

Blood. Pendant. Only missing one thing now. 

She started to chant. Danny couldn’t understand the words, but clearly the demon did, because it dropped him instantly and whipped around to try to grab Jazz. It failed. Something about the necklace she was holding formed a barrier between them. 

**_W A I T_ **

As Jazz continued to chant, the pendant started to glow, and Danny realized that the energy there was  _ his.  _ Phantom had peeled himself off the ground and made his way, unseen by her, to Jazz’s side, amplifying the power of the words she spoke. Holding the pendant in front of her like a torch to ward off the dark, she continued chanting, and moved across the room until she was by Danny’s side. 

**_S T O P_ **

The two reached for each other at the same time, and soon Jazz had Danny’s bloody hand clasped in hers. She was almost done. Just one more word to say. Danny didn’t know how he knew it, but somehow he did, and so the two spoke it together:

_ “Contineo.”  _

The pendant shattered. 

And then it… un-shattered. 

The broken pieces scattered then began to swirl around Spectra like a dust storm, slowly starting to reform. The demon screamed and shrank, letting its number of faces, arms, legs, shrink until it was just one shadowy, humanlike figure. She clawed at the air, trying to swat the shards away, then started shapeshifting wildly, anything to offset the barrier that had suddenly started to surround her. 

**_No- NO-_ **

She was suddenly Sam, then Tucker, then Jazz, Sam, Tucker, Jazz…

Then she was someone new. 

The pieces were swirling so close that it was hard to see her beyond the storm they’d turned into, but Danny could just make out what her new form was.

A bearded man. Long hair so blond it skirted the edge of white, tired lines by his eyes, eyes that would have seemed so kind if not for the fact that they were filled with Spectra’s terror and malice. 

Phantom froze. He knew who this was supposed to be. 

**_“I can help you,”_ ** the creature begged, switching tactics as time was running out.  **_“I only ever wanted to help you. I know everything- I know who you are, I know your father- I know- I know who killed him- Don’t you want to know- know who-”_ **

The pieces suddenly snapped back together with a series of clicks, and the pendant fell to the floor with a clatter. The glow of ghostly energy abruptly left the room as everything went silent. The demon was gone. 

Phantom was staring into the space where her final disguise had been standing.

And then everything faded. 

\---

Danny woke up in the guidance counselor’s office, and so did everybody else. Not just Jazz, but about twenty other students, including Dash, Paulina, Kwan, Star, and everyone else he’d seen in that inky blackness. 

Dash spoke up first. “Gah… What happened?” 

They weren’t dead.  _ They weren’t dead.  _ Danny was so relieved, he almost hugged Dash right then and there... But he didn’t. He still had standards. 

Clearly his staring had been obvious, because Dash shot him a glare. “What are  _ you  _ looking at, Fenturd?”

Danny laughed, and to Dash’s confusion, clapped him on the back. “Nothing, dude, nothing.” 

“Weirdo.” 

Someone opened the door, and all the confused, half-asleep teenagers began to wander out. Jazz had finally squeezed her way across the crowded room to Danny, and threw her arms around him. 

“We did it, oh my god, we did it.” 

“Haha, yeah. Weird dream, right?” 

Jazz pulled back just to glare at him, then took his wrist and lifted up his injured hand. It was still bleeding. 

“Nice try, buster. We’re getting this patched up, and then you and I are gonna have a long talk about what  _ exactly  _ a medium is.” 

Danny sighed, then gave a tired smile. “I never thought you’d believe me.” 

“Hard to deny  _ that  _ sort of evidence. Believe me, I’ve been trying.” 

The two laughed. Phantom didn’t. He was hiding somewhere behind Danny, and he’d been weirdly silent since they’d woken up. Danny was going to need to talk to him later about what they’d seen in there. Later, though. That felt like a conversation they needed to have alone. 

Jazz lifted the pendant. From the chill it gave him, Danny could tell there was definitely still something in there… but it was contained. It wouldn’t be hurting anybody like this. 

“What do you suppose we do with  _ this? _ ” Jazz asked. 

“I… don’t know. Throw it somewhere very far away before Mom and Dad get their hands on it.” 

“...We’ll figure it out. For now, let’s get that hand patched up, okay?”

“Okay.” 

Teachers were starting to gather, at first showing annoyance at the volume of students out here during class time, then shock, as they realized who those students were. Soon enough, parents were being called, and students were being ushered to the principal’s office- or the nurse’s, in Danny’s case. 

As the nurse wrapped his hand, Danny glanced into the hallway, and noticed a shadowy shape. At first he thought it was Phantom, but Phantom was curled up like a cat somewhere beside him. Then he realized who it was. 

Sidney waved. 

Danny gave a little smile and waved back. 

\---

Jazz Fenton was still worried, but less, now that she knew exactly what she was dealing with. Sure, Danny still tended to be secretive, sure, he still had private conversations with the ghost that was apparently possessing him (a fact that he was apparently all good with), but he was okay… more or less. It was more or less okay.

Okay, it wasn’t really. This was weird. Too weird. But Danny was her brother, and she’d do whatever she could to help him deal with this supernatural otherworld that had apparently declared war on him. She’d taken to carrying jars of salt in her backpack. She even tried laying a trail of it over Danny’s doorway so no ghost would try to attack him in his sleep, but in the morning he complained that he couldn’t get out, so she’d vacuumed it away. 

So maybe she’d have to do a bit more reading before she could be reliably helpful against ghosts. Fortunately, Danny could handle himself on that front for the most part. What he  _ really  _ needed her help for were the threats on  _ this  _ side of the veil- their parents. They’d been getting suspicious of him, especially after his outburst and subsequent disappearance, but after Jazz gathered together all the psychology terms in her arsenal to convince them that his behaviour was just a case of being a teenager, not being possessed, she managed to convince them to shelve their exorcism plans… for now, at least. 

Things would be okay.

There was just one final thing that was bothering her about the whole incident. One thing that hadn’t gotten an answer. 

Spectra’s final disguise. 

_ “Your father.”  _

There was only one being in the hallway whose father that could’ve been. Jazz wouldn’t pretend that she knew much about this mysterious Phantom, or anything about him, really, but considering Danny’s brand new obsession with Amity Park death certificates, the question had been bothering him too. Who  _ was  _ he? And without Spectra… how would they ever find out? 

Whatever the case… Spectra’s help would never have been worth it. Her offers of knowledge were appealing, sure, but at what cost? Jazz was fine not knowing a few things if it meant  _ not  _ having a murderous demon living in the back of her head. 

Some things might just never have an answer, and that was okay. 

\---

_ it’s not okay.  _

“I know, man, I know. I swear, I’ve been doing my best, but there’s only so much you can find off of a description alone.” 

…

“C’mon, Phantom. She tried to eat us. Do you really think her information was reliable, anyway? She was just trying to save her own skin.” 

_ but she knew _

_ and for just a little _

_ i remembered  _

_ how? _

“I don’t know. But even if she  _ did  _ tell you, what good would that be if she just ate us right after? We’ll find out ourselves. It’s gotta be in these records somewhere…” 

…

“It’ll be okay.” 

_ i hope so.  _


	15. Interlude II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Trapped" does not mean "gone."

Harriet Chin was being watched. 

Usually, she was used to that sort of thing. Lights, camera, action, reporting to you live from the scene. Anyone in Amity Park could’ve seen one of her broadcasts, some time or another. Anyone in the world, even- She’d reported from enough places. 

This? This was different. These were the eyes on the back of your neck. The sort of attention you close your blinds to avoid. Something that knew you. Something you didn’t  _ want  _ to know you. She couldn't figure out what it was, exactly, but it seemed… Appraising. 

She wasn’t sure how she knew this. Maybe because she wasn’t awake. 

If she was awake, she wouldn’t be in high school again. The halls wouldn’t be endless. The teenagers surrounding her on all sides wouldn’t be faceless. She stood there, holding a stack of books to her chest as the crowd flowed by her. 

The thing was getting closer.

**_Hello, Harriet._ **

The voice sounded vaguely female, but not exactly human, either. Harriet didn’t turn around. 

“Who are you?”

**_It’s not really important, not yet, at least. The important part is that I’m like you. It’s why I’m here, after all._ **

“Do explain.” 

**_You want to know everything. We deal in different truths, but It’s all the same in the end. You want the answers, and I can help you find them. I wonder, do you have what it takes…?_ **

“How do you know who I am?”

**_When you go chasing the wrong rabbit, certain people notice._ **

Something was breaking the faceless teenage monotony ahead of her. A blonde, bearded man, equally faceless as the teenagers, but familiar regardless. He was walking past her now. Where did she know him from?

_ Wait- _

“Clay Morris-” 

She turned around to follow him, but he was already gone, and so was everybody else. The hallway was empty now, save for one solitary figure. Harriet wasn’t sure she could call it a figure, even. It was a shadowy form, shapeless, barely visible, save for its red eyes. When she let her eyes unfocus, however, it almost seemed like a human woman. She saw red hair, for a second. Then it was gone. 

**_I picked that one up just the other day. That memory, that is. The one I took it from has already forgotten what it looked like._ **

“What- What  _ are _ you?”

**_There’s something buried in the park behind Casper High. Come and find out._ **

\---

With a gasp, Harriet sat up straight, looking around wildly as the feeling of eyes on the back of her neck finally began to dissipate. 

“Some dream,” she mumbled, glancing down at the documents she’d fallen asleep on top of. 

It had been a long night in Amity Park’s historical records office. She was surprised she hadn’t been kicked out, but apparently no one had noticed. In her search for leads, she’d found a few things- Documents relating to the three murdered men. Tristan Elliot and Benjamin Price hadn’t turned up much- They really had had no family. Never married, estranged from relatives, etc. She’d found those documents back in Wisconsin, but they hadn’t been much help. Clay Morris, on the other hand, had turned up a few things. He had a family, once upon a time, but then… something had happened, and everything had fallen apart. A sudden death, a messy divorce, a move to Wisconsin, a new dead-end job at Vladco, then… the end. Sad as it was, it wasn't all that useful. She’d driven all the way to Amity Park to follow this lead, but it seemed like she might’ve wasted her time. 

Her eyes drifted back to the photo of Clay on the table as her mind drifted back to her strange dream. What had that been about, anyway? It seemed so… specific. So real. Like that figure that claimed to know her so well actually  _ did _ . 

Come to the park behind Casper High, it had said. There’s something buried.  _ Why?  _ No way in hell was she digging around in the dirt just because some  _ dream  _ had told her to. 

...And yet, she couldn’t help but feel like for some reason she  _ had  _ to. Like she had no choice in the matter. Like some invisible rope was preparing to drag her there the moment she stepped outside.

_ Nope. No. No way. _

She was just running on too little sleep. 

\---

She’d been underestimated. 

No matter.

She’d find her way back soon enough. 


	16. Vengeful Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new player enters the fray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry for the delay. It's been hard to get past the writers block lately. But I'm back, and I'm ready to start the new arc! Hope you enjoy!

Valerie Gray had been haunted all her life. 

Shadows creeping up the walls. Figures flickering in the mirror. Imaginary friends that weren’t so friendly once she realized that they weren’t imaginary, either. It was less like having one foot in either world and more like another world leaking into her own. They were shadows she could see, but not touch. Observe, but not control. 

It wasn’t until she was eleven that her mother had finally explained to her what she was. 

Her mother was less haunted by the other side of the veil than she haunted _ it. _ It was awe-inspiring, what she could do with a few latin words and a drop of blood. She was powerful in a way that made Valerie feel safe. Who would be afraid of the monster under the bed with a mother who scared the monsters away? Audrey Gray was a protector, a shield, a beacon of light in a world where shadows crept round every corner. She was a medium, and she kept the shadows at bay. 

Until one day she couldn’t. 

It had been a year since then, and the flames that were Valerie’s grief had shifted into the sort of simmering anger that had her cursing the darkness and placing lines of salt across her doorway. When her friends had brought out a Ouija board at a sleepover one time, she’d broken it in half. She kept a planter on her balcony where she grew blood blossoms, after she’d noticed the shadows recoil the first time her father had brought the flower home and placed it in a vase. Maybe people noticed, maybe they didn’t, but when asked, she’d vehemently deny it. 

She did not believe in ghosts. 

She _ hated  _ them. 

Some days she wished for the sort of power her mother had had, but she always reigned herself in before doing anything crazy. Her mother’s power had protected her, but it had also gotten her killed. Valerie felt she owed it to her to not follow in those footsteps. As long as she stayed like this, the shadows couldn’t touch her. She couldn’t touch them, either, but it seemed like a good enough compromise. She’d stick to her world. They could make faces in her mirror all they wanted, but there was nothing a ghost could do to someone as mortal as her. 

Or so she thought. 

She’d been right in her assumption that most ghosts couldn’t affect the mortal world in any meaningful way, but she’d been wrong in thinking that made her safe.  _ Most ghosts  _ didn’t mean  _ all.  _

When all those students had gone missing, she’d noticed. Hell, some of them were her best friends. The muddled explanations of what had happened to them had only made her more suspicious. 

_ Party, huh? My ass.  _

They hadn’t left of their own accord. She knew this, because she’d seen it herself. The shadows in the corner overwhelming everything, taking them away- Paulina, Star, Dash, Kwan… All of them. Why she’d been spared, she had no idea. Probably the amount of salt she’d taken to carrying in her backpack. Of course she’d tried to tell her dad, anyone- but he’d never believed in the supernatural, not really. And anyone else? They’d just think she was crazy. 

She wasn’t crazy. She’d always known that. What she hadn’t known before now was that she wasn’t alone. 

Valerie Gray knew what she had seen- The shadows swallowing her friends and Danny Fenton walking back out of them.

Shadow in tow. 

You could make the excuse that he was simply haunted. It wasn’t that unusual to see a lingering spirit following people around. A dead relative? Dead friend? Maybe… but she’d also noticed something else. 

_ He had been talking to it.  _

It didn’t take long for her to realize that Danny Fenton wasn’t anything like her at all. 

She’d never seen the shadows harm mortals. She’d also never seen someone talking to them like he had, like that  _ thing _ was an old friend. It didn’t take much to put two and two together. 

As she watched him walk away, she clenched her fist around the jar of salt in her pocket, her mind drifting back to the blood blossoms she’d been raising at home. For a moment, inexplicably, he turned his head back towards her, and the two met eyes. 

  
_ Danny Fenton,  _ she thought to herself,  _ I’m onto you.  _


End file.
